Genzyme presents $50,000 check.
Genzyme presented the National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) with the first of a five-year installment to support the growth and development of NDRI’s National Rare Disease Biomaterials Resource. The check of $50,000 will go toward NDRI’s effort to increase the supply of donated human tissues and donor DNA and cell lines for studying rare diseases.
More than 6,000 orphan diseases, those with an incidence in the U.S. of less than 200,000 cases per year, have been identified. NDRI’s pilot program on this initiative served some 90 scientists in more than 100 rare diseases. NDRI’s current tissue catalogue contains disease-relevant frozen specimens from rare diseases, including ALS, amyloidosis, Batten disease, DiGeorge syndrome, Huntington’s disease, Lewy body dementia, Marfan syndrome, muscular dystrophy, lupus, progressive supranuclear palsy, and sarcoidosis.
