Extraordinary Measures

TheScientist has posted a review of Extraodinary Measures, an interesting new movie about a rare disease and the process of drug discovery:

Rare diseases and drug discovery don't usually make for Hollywood blockbusters.  But today (January 22) a film about a genetic affliction that strikes fewer than 10,000 people worldwide hits movie screens, and it has some serious star power behind it.  Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser head up the cast of Extraordinary Measures, a new movie that may lift Pompe disease from the shadows of obscurity into the spotlight, as the focal point of an inspirational story of paternal love and scientific innovation.

Extraordinary Measures tells the tale of businessman John Crowley (played by Fraser) who makes it his mission to promote the development of an enzyme therapy to treat his two youngest children, who are sick with Pompe.  Teaming up with University of Nebraska researcher Robert Stonehill (Ford), Crowley starts a small biotech company called Priozyme dedicated to his purpose.  (In reality, the researcher who helped Crowley was William Canfield of the University of the Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, and the company Crowley launched was called Novazyme.)

Wow, how interesting, as a Harrison Ford fan as well as someone interested in digital pathology, this seems like a must see.  And fortunately it seems that the movie mostly "gets it right"...

Comments

[Cristina Tolentino]

Truly this film is an inspirational story about a parent that would undergo extraordinary measures just to save the children life.