Qatar Tribune

QF, Roche partner to take precision medicine into mainstream health care

Tie-up with int’l pharmaceut­ical company will open up opportunit­ies for Qatari students

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A new partnershi­p between Qatar Foundation (QF) and an internatio­nal pharmaceut­ical company is aiming to advance precision medicine into mainstream clinical care in Qatar and open up opportunit­ies for Qatari students to gain experience in the pharma industry.

Qatar Foundation Research, Developmen­t and Innovation (QF RDI) and Roche have announced a three-year collaborat­ion designed to help take more personalis­ed, tailored treatments from the laboratory stage to the point where they are being used in primary healthcare settings.

By combining their expertise, QF RDI and Roche will develop a repeatable process that translates the outcomes of precision medicine research into clinical use in Qatar, with the first stage focusing on how genetic markers can guide diagnoses and treatment decisions for diseases such as cancer. The two partners will also create registries and repositori­es of genomic data to support this process.

Meanwhile, the partnershi­p will pilot a scheme to provide six-month placements for Qatari postgradua­te students in molecular biology programmes at QF’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University and Qatar University to gain real-world experience of the life-sciences field with Roche, and heighten their awareness of career opportunit­ies within pharmaceut­ical research.

“We are delighted to be entering into this collaborat­ion on precision medicine with our newest partner, Roche,” said Dr Richard O’Kennedy, vice-president for Research, Developmen­t and Innovation at QF, who signed the Memorandum of Understand­ing between QF and Roche with Padraic Ward, head of Roche Pharma Internatio­nal.

“Precision medicine is one of the key advances that has taken place in the field of human health care. We now know that tailoring treatment to a particular subgroup of patients is certainly complex, but ultimately it is incredibly rewarding and effective and will improve disease treatment significan­tly.

“Qatar Foundation is determined to be at the vanguard of precision medicine developmen­t, for people in Qatar and for the wider world. We see this collaborat­ion as a perfect platform for continuing this crucial work, and look forward to what we all believe will be an extremely valuable partnershi­p.”

Ward said: “Personalis­ed health care (PHC) is a cornerston­e of our strategy at Roche, and we are excited to work together with Qatar Foundation and jointly accelerate the realisatio­n of PHC in Qatar.”

A key element of the collaborat­ion between QF RDI and Roche will concentrat­e on accelerati­ng and increasing the accuracy of disease diagnosis through using genetic markers identifyin­g whether diseases have a genetic root cause and supporting clinicians to deliver precision medicine in a way that generates the best patient outcomes. The partners will also create a regulatory framework against which this work will take place.

Through the collaborat­ion, QF RDI’s growing mass of phenotypic and omics’ data, and Roche’s track record of healthcare leadership and growing capabiliti­es in innovative Artificial Intelligen­ce and machine learning tools, will be combined to create a vault of genomic data that can help translate precision medicine research into widespread clinical use.

The signing of the agreement between QF and Roche was also attended by Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al Thani, chairman of Al Faisal Holdings, the official Roche distributo­r in Qatar HE Edgar D rig, Swiss Ambassador to Qatar Dr Ahmed Tawfik, Roche Gulf Cluster country manager and Ahmed Medhat, Roche Personalis­ed Medicine lead.

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