SAN DIEGO, Calif., September 15, 2022, (Business Wire) — n-Lorem, a nonprofit foundation,  today announced that n-Lorem founder and CEO, Stanley Crooke, M.D., Ph.D. will receive the 2022 Roy Vagelos Pro Bono Humanum Award for Global Health Equity of the Prix Galien. This award recognizes Dr. Crooke’s nearly 50 years of dedication to a novel, clinically endorsed concept of using synthetic oligonucleotides to control the expression of genes and proteins that impact disease. Dr. Crooke is also recognized for his leadership in being among the first in industry to make a commitment to open science a key element of the modern R&D enterprise and to embrace the principle that even patients with the rarest of afflictions deserve the best talent and expertise the R&D industry can offer.

The 2022 Roy Vagelos Pro Bono Humanum Award for Global Health Equity of the Prix Galien USA is given each year to an individual or institution that has helped to improve the human condition in extraordinary ways. The award, which is selected by a Committee of distinguished scientists and Nobel laureates, recognizes innovative individual and group efforts to improve the human condition through the application of biomedical science to health problems in developing or underserved populations worldwide. Past winners include Bill Clinton, Dr. Francis Collins, Jimmy Carter, Bill and Melinda Gates and Jim and Marilyn Simons.

In selecting Dr. Crooke for the award, the committee called out his leadership and commitment to embrace the principle that every patient – even those with the rarest of conditions – deserve the best talent and expertise that healthcare’s research and development can offer. It also noted his nearly 50 years of commitment to developing a novel, clinically endorsed concept of using synthetic oligonucleotides to control the expression of genes and proteins that cause disease, providing a new and highly personalized pathway to address some of the most difficult-to-treat illnesses.

“This award recognizes Dr. Crooke’s lifetime of dedication to improving the lives of patients through his outstanding career, his creation of a drug discovery platform that has the power to alter the course of genetic diseases. It also recognizes Dr. Crooke’s decision to establish the n-Lorem Foundation and dedicate his life to bringing his powerful ASO technology to patients with rare genetic diseases who previously had no hope of a potential treatment can benefit from this entirely new class of medicines,” said Robert Langer, Institute Professor of Chemical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Crooke founded n-Lorem Foundation in 2020 as the first, industrialized non-profit foundation to meet the challenges of some of the rarest of rare patients – nano-rare patients, which have illnesses so rare that fewer than 30 people worldwide are afflicted with them. These patients often have no treatment options because their illnesses are too rare for for-profit companies to invest in the research and development of therapies. Once n-Lorem discovers and develops a personalized treatment for each individual nano-rare patient, the ASO therapy is provided free for life.

As a hands-on scientific leader his entire career, Dr. Crooke is credited with inventing, advancing and validating a new drug discovery platform, RNA-targeted drug discovery, and using this platform to discover and develop life-changing therapies. Over the course of his career, Dr. Crooke has led the discovery and development of hundreds of drugs, including more than 23 commercialized drugs, and published more than 500 scientific publications.

Learn more about n-Lorem’s mission at www.nlorem.org, and please consider giving to n-Lorem to bring hope, possibility and treatment options to these needy patients and families.

• Subscribe to n-Lorem’s Patient Empowerment Program, a podcast series for nano-rare patients
• Watch: n-Lorem Foundation: Offering Hope and Help to Nano-rare Patients
• Watch: n-Lorem Foundation Delivers Hope and Treatment for Patient with Nano-Rare Disease 

About the Prix Galien Pro Bono Humanum Award

The Prix Galien rewards excellence and novelty, and awards special honors to those who have served humanity at large. Presented at the 16th annual Prix Galien USA Awards Ceremony, which will be held on October 27, 2022, the Pro Bono Humanum Award recognizes exemplary and innovative efforts in improving the human condition. This special award was presented by the late and beloved Elie Wiesel, in presence of the Prix Galien USA Committee. The Pro Bono Humanum Award was renamed the Roy Vagelos Pro Bono Humanum Award in 2017 in recognition of his decades of leadership in improving the state of human health through medicines innovation. For more information visit: www.galienfoundation.org.

About n-Lorem

n-Lorem Foundation is a non-profit organization established to apply the efficiency, versatility and specificity of antisense technology to charitably provide experimental antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) medicines to treat nano-rare patients diagnosed with diseases that are the result of a single genetic defect unique to only one or very few individuals. Nano-rare patients describe a very small group of patients (1-30 worldwide) who, because of their small numbers, have few if any treatment options. n-Lorem Foundation was created to provide hope to these nano-rare patients by developing individualized ASO medicines, which are short strands of modified DNA that can specifically target the transcripts of a defective gene to correct the abnormality. The advantage of experimental ASO medicines is that they can be developed rapidly, inexpensively and are highly specific. To date, n-Lorem has assisted in the development and treatment of 14 nano-rare patients and received over 100 applications for treatment with more than 40 nano-rare patients approved. n-Lorem was founded by Stanley T. Crooke, M.D., Ph.D., former chairman and CEO of Ionis Pharmaceuticals, who founded Ionis Pharmaceuticals in 1989 and, through his vision and leadership, established the company as the leader in RNA-targeted therapeutics. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

n-Lorem contact:

Amy Williford, Ph.D.
Director of Communications
[email protected]

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