n-Lorem Foundation Names Andrew W. Lo as a New Member of its Board of Directors
May 14 2024 - 9:05AM
Business Wire
Andrew Lo’s expertise in creating novel economic models that
provide solutions for cost of care for rare illnesses could open
the door for more nano-rare patients to receive treatment
n-Lorem, a nonprofit foundation discovering, developing and
providing experimental antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) medicines
for nano-rare patients (1 to 30 patients worldwide) for free, for
life, today announced that Andrew W. Lo, Ph.D., has joined its
Board of Directors.
“n-Lorem has taken on the complex and seemingly insurmountable
problem of developing therapies for nano-rare illnesses and created
a replicable and scalable model that has the potential to vastly
improve the lives of patients without bankrupting their families or
the healthcare system,” said Andrew W. Lo, Ph.D., Charles E. and
Susan T. Harris Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of
Management. “This is a challenge that I’ve been working on for the
past decade and a half, and am excited and honored to support in
any way I can n-Lorem’s noble efforts to accelerate ASO clinical
research and drug development to benefit people struggling with
nano-rare conditions.”
“Every member of the nano-rare community is unique, but their
need for therapies that can help halt the progression of their
illness is not. With hundreds of thousands of nano-rare patients in
the U.S. alone, we need to continue identifying efficiencies that
will ensure we can help even more people,” said Stanley T. Crooke,
M.D., Ph.D., Founder, Chairman and CEO, n-Lorem Foundation.
“Andrew’s understanding of healthcare economics and his extensive
experience examining how to effectively address rare and ultra-rare
diseases will be informative for our continued work. I know he will
be an indispensable complement to our current Board as we continue
to expand our work to help those who have been overlooked by
traditional healthcare economic models.”
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.
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 Andrew W. Lo
Andrew W. Lo is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at
the MIT Sloan School of Management, director of MIT’s Laboratory
for Financial Engineering, and principal investigator at MIT's
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His
healthcare-related research interests include: new financial
engineering tools and business models for drug and device
development and healthcare delivery, especially for rare and
ultra-rare diseases; statistical methods for incorporating patient
preferences into the drug approval process; predicting clinical
trial outcomes via machine learning techniques; and novel
reimbursement models for creating a robust gene and cell therapy
ecosystem. He is a co-founder of BridgeBio Pharma, QLS Advisors,
Quantile Health, and Uncommon Cures; a director of AbCellera,
Atomwise, BridgeBio, Uncommon Cures, and Vesalius; and a member of
the advisory board to the American Cancer Society’s BrightEdge
Impact Fund. Lo received his B.A. in economics from Yale University
and his A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
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 received over 260 applications for
treatment with more than 120 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.
To 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 patients and families in need.
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n-Lorem Contact: Amy Williford, Ph.D. Sr. Director of
Communications amy.williford@nlorem.org