By Clinical Informatics News Staff 

February 15, 2017 | Boehringer Ingelheim today announced a collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine to identify new treatment approaches for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in order to develop novel treatments that could possibly halt or even reverse the progression of the disease process. The new, three-year collaboration combines Weill Cornell Medicine’s Department of Genetic Medicine’s understanding of chronic airway diseases and experience in the investigation of novel therapeutic concepts for airway repair with Boehringer Ingelheim’s expertise in the discovery and development of new therapies for respiratory diseases. This collaboration is the second collaboration between Boehringer Ingelheim and Weill Cornell Medicine, following prior work in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

“Our continuous search for molecular drivers of chronic obstructive airway diseases has revealed novel repair mechanisms that warrant further investigation of their potential as therapeutic approaches,” wrote Ronald G. Crystal, Chairman of Genetic Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and lead investigator in the new collaboration. “We will look to further expand our knowledge about progressive airway destruction in close collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim and focus on promising therapeutic concepts with the potential to slow down or halt progressive airway damage in patients with COPD.”

Clive R. Wood, Senior Corporate Vice President, Discovery Research at Boehringer Ingelheim, added in a statement, “The scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine 
and Boehringer Ingelheim will work hand in hand to translate new discoveries into drug discovery and development programs at Boehringer Ingelheim. The new collaboration is an excellent example of our unique partnering approach and our focus on early innovation, underscoring our ambition to develop the next generation of medical treatments for patients with COPD.”