SALT LAKE CITY, March 01, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Recursion (Nasdaq: RXRX), a leading clinical stage TechBio company decoding biology to industrialize drug discovery, hosted its second annual Rare Disease Day event at its headquarters on February 29 and virtually in partnership with Alliance to Cure at eight sites across the United States to provide resources and support for Utah’s rare disease community. The event featured speakers from patient advocacy organizations and biotech and healthcare industry leaders who all share a goal to accelerate the diagnosis and improve the care of more than 344,000 Utahns living with a rare disease. 

In the United States, a rare disease is considered a condition with less than 200,000 patients. More than 10,000 rare diseases are known, most of which are genetic in nature. An estimated one in 10 people in the United States have a rare disease. Today, 95 percent of rare diseases have no treatment.

Recursion’s Rare Disease Day event was intended to raise awareness for rare and undiagnosed diseases and the lifelong impact they have on patients and their families – while highlighting progress in diagnosis and treatment discovery. The event recognized advocates who have been instrumental in building Utah’s rare disease community and have dedicated themselves to support this important work.

"This event serves as an important reminder of the strength, resilience and unrelenting spirit of our rare disease community here in Utah,” said Aimee Edwards, Executive Director of BioHive. “Through the power of our BioHive network of 1,600+ life science and healthcare companies in Utah, we aim to bring hope to patients and their families impacted by these conditions. We are proud of the formidable progress made and are fully dedicated to continuing our efforts until every unmet need in the rare disease community is addressed."

“There is an urgency for diagnoses, treatment and cures for the rare disease community,” said Gina Zanik, co-founder and executive director of Rare and Undiagnosed Network and Vice Chair of the Utah Rare Disease Advisory Council. “The diagnostic odyssey for someone with a rare disease takes on average seven years. We must shorten the length of the diagnostic journey and come together to support patients and their families throughout the duration.”

Rare Disease Day is an annual observance on the last day of February. A series of events were held globally to raise awareness, strengthen the rare disease community, and advocate for needed changes to improve the lives of the 400 million people around the world who suffer from these conditions.

Rare disease patients came together at Recursion with the RARE and Undiagnosed Network (RUN), RARE-X, BioHive, ARUP Laboratories, BioUtah, the University of Utah and the Rare Disease Advisory Council (RDAC) for the Rare Disease Day event. The coalition of organizations represents Utah’s strong collaborative ecosystem dedicated to coordinating, advocating, and promoting the interest of those living with rare diseases.

“Recursion was founded to reimagine the drug discovery and development process with an early focus on rare diseases,” said Chris Gibson, Ph.D., Co-Founder and CEO of Recursion. “The status quo is failing to meet the needs of millions of patients with rare diseases. The rapidly growing TechBio industry is harnessing technologies like artificial intelligence to accelerate the process of bringing more, better medicines to patients who need them.”

About Recursion

Recursion is a clinical stage TechBio company leading the space by decoding biology to industrialize drug discovery. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, a platform built across diverse technologies that continuously expands one of the world’s largest proprietary biological, chemical and patient-centric datasets. Recursion leverages sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to distill from its dataset a collection of trillions of searchable relationships across biology and chemistry unconstrained by human bias. By commanding massive experimental scale — up to millions of wet lab experiments weekly — and massive computational scale — owning and operating one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, Recursion is uniting technology, biology, chemistry and patient-centric data to advance the future of medicine. 

Recursion is headquartered in Salt Lake City, where it is a founding member of BioHive, the Utah life sciences industry collective. Recursion also has offices in Toronto, Montreal and the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at www.Recursion.com, or connect on X (formerlyTwitter) and LinkedIn.