Protein Technologies Ltd. is a leader in the area of diagnostics and drug development for rare or neglected diseases.
Rare diseases, also known as orphan diseases, are those which affect a minority of the population. Seven thousand rare diseases have been identified to date and affect 3.5 million individuals in UK, and 300 million globally.
Almost half of the known rare diseases are enzyme disorders – the human body either producing a deficient version of a given enzyme or failing to produce it all.
As many of these diseases have only been identified in the last few decades and have relatively small patient populations, it is perhaps not surprising that the pharmaceutical industry has yet to produce effective treatments for the majority of them.
Currently the company is working to develop effective diagnostic tools and therapies for certain rare diseases.