Pfizer officially opened the new Center of Excellence in Precision Medicine (CEPM) on July 8 in Santiago, Chile.
Precision medicine is a form of healthcare where disease treatments are customized for individual patients based on their genetic profile.
CEPM’s goal is to create and validate new technology platforms that can precisely diagnose cancer through genomic sequencing without resorting to invasive procedures.
Investigating lung cancer will be CEPM’s first endeavor.
“Non-small cell lung cancer, which we will be analyzing at CEPM during its initial phase, has a high incidence in Chile and the region. In Chile, it is estimated that there are between 1,800 and 2,100 cases a year,” said Sylvia Varela, president of Pfizer Oncology in Latin America, in a statement.
Thermo Fisher Scientific, CEPM’s technology partner, will give CEPM access to its ION personal genome machine (PGM), a genetic sequencer, to kick-start the research process.
President of Thermo Fisher Scientific Latin America Roberto Mendes noted the Ion PGM was chosen for this endeavor because “it is a revolutionary DNA sequencer that uses next-generation sequencing technology to perform full analysis.”
The official announcement didn’t specify as to what the timeline would be for this research, but it assured all studies conducted at CEPM would meet the standards required by international regulatory agencies.