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Pfizer Launches Precision Medicine Center of Excellence

NEW YORK(GenomeWeb) – Pfizer this week launched its Center of Excellence in Precision in Medicine (CEPM) in Chile. 

Efforts at the center will initially focus on validating new, more precise, and less invasive technologies for diagnosing cancer, and in addition to Pfizer's $14 million investment into the center, the Chilean Economic Development Agency (Corfo) is providing $7 million over four years. 

Thermo Fisher Scientific is the technology partner for the center, which will use the firm's Ion PGM platform for the first phase of research. Thermo Fisher has invested $3 million in its first project with CEPM. 

In CEPM's first phase, it will conduct research into lung cancer, a disease that hits between 1,800 and 2,100 people in Chile each year, Sylvia Varela, president of Pfizer Oncology for Latin America, said in a statement. 

The work will validate new technology platforms for next-generation sequencing-based molecular diagnostics. 

"In Chile, we have very good scientific productivity; however, we have not been able to transform that knowledge into actual products and services that improve both the productivity of industries and the quality of life of people," Marcela Angulo, manager for technological capabilities at Corfo, said in a statement. "By developing this type of strategic partnership, we will be able to further our country's capabilities for research, development, and innovation of excellence, as well as position Chile [on] the map of innovation centers at a regional and global level."