Seven IPF Experts Named to NuMedii Advisory Board

Earlier this week, NuMedii, Inc. announced the official formation of an Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) Advisory Board.

The newly created Board of Advisors will seek to provide deep scientific and clinical expertise to the company as it discovers and advances new treatments for IPF, based on NuMedii's Artificial Intelligence for Drug Discovery (AIDD) technology.

IPF is a progressive, life-threatening disease with poor prognosis in which the replacement of small air sacs of the lung with fibrotic tissue causes the gradual worsening of dyspnea. The condition is characterized by common symptoms like shortness of breath; fatigue; dry, hacking cough; and shallow breathing.

By partnering information from basic human biology that consists of both insights from literature and molecular, pharmacological and clinical data points with proprietary machine learning and network-based algorithms, NuMedii’s AIDD technology seeks to discover and advance precise, effective new drug candidates, and biomarkers predictive of efficacy for subsets of patients in IPF and other rare diseases.

"We are thrilled to assemble such a distinguished group of experts in IPF on our Advisory Board," said Gini Deshpande, Ph.D., chief executive officer, NuMedii, Inc. in a press release. "The formation of our IPF Advisory Board and our achievement in building our proprietary knowledge base for IPF ahead of schedule reflects our steadfast commitment to this rare disease. We thank all our IPF Advisors for their dedication, as their unparalleled insights and experiences will be invaluable to NuMedii as we continue to further advance our work in IPF, a horrible lung disease for which there remains significant unmet medical need."

Among the experts who have been named to the new Board of Advisors are:

• Naftali Kaminski, MD — Boehringer-Ingelheim Professor of Internal Medicine and Chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Yale School of Medicine
• David A. Schwartz, MD — Professor of Medicine and Immunology, Robert W. Schrier Chair of Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine
• Kevin Brown, MD — Vice Chair, Department of Medicine Clinical Affairs, National Jewish Health, Denver; Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Colorado, Denver School of Medicine
• Toby Maher, MD, PhD — British Lung Foundation Chair in Respiratory Research and National Institute for Health Research Clinician Scientist; Professor of Interstitial Lung Disease and head of the Fibrosis Research Group, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London; Honorary Consultant Respiratory Physician, Interstitial Lung Disease Unit, Royal Brompton Hospital
• Gisli Jenkins, MD, PhD — Professor of Experimental Medicine, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, University of Nottingham School of Medicine, UK
• Zea Borok, MD — Professor of Medicine, Ralph Edgington Chair in Medicine, Chief, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
• Paul Wolters, MD — Professor of Medicine, University of San Francisco School of Medicine

NuMedii continues to cultivate AIDD technology at Stanford University, and has active research and development collaborations with several global pharmaceutical and biotech companies and patient-focused organizations to create pipeline and new products in multiple therapeutic areas including rare diseases.

For more from companies looking to impact the rare disease community, follow Rare Disease Report on Facebook and Twitter.

To get rare disease news sent straight to your inbox, sign up for our e-newsletter.