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2027 Scholar-Innovator and ADDF-Harrington
May 20, 2026
Former British PM David Cameron brings his personal mission to Cleveland as a major rare disease conference begins at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
CLEVELAND — When Lord David Cameron takes the stage at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, he carries more than a former UK prime minister's credentials. He carries the memory of his son Ivan, who died in 2009 at age six from an extremely rare neurological disorder — and a commitment to making sure other families don't face the same dead ends.
Cameron's keynote address Wednesday evening kicked off the Harrington Discovery Institute's 13th Annual Scientific Symposium, a gathering of physician-scientists, pharmaceutical experts, entrepreneurs, and innovators from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Their shared mission: develop new treatments and cures for diseases that have stumped science for decades — among them cancer, Alzheimer's, and rare diseases affecting small but desperate patient populations.
Cameron chairs the Advisory Council for the Oxford-Harrington Rare Disease Centre, a collaboration between Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals and the University of Oxford. The centre funds researchers across three countries with a singular goal — creating medicines for patients who currently have few or no options.
The work is deeply personal for more than one stakeholder. Cleveland Browns co-owner Dee Haslam, diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia — known as CLL — in 2021, and her husband Jimmy committed $10 million to the Oxford-Harrington Rare Disease Centre to accelerate drug development for CLL and related blood cancers. They directed an additional $2.5 million to University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center, establishing an endowed chair in CLL research and an innovation fund.
CLL is the most common leukemia in adults. Treatments exist and have made it manageable — but no cure does.
The philanthropic funding model powering Oxford-Harrington carries added significance right now. In the United Kingdom, national budget pressures are leading to grant freezes. In the United States, federal funding cuts have disrupted health and medical research, with some grants ended based on subject matter rather than scientific review — a trend researchers say is delaying work on diseases that still have no cure..
Private investment helps insulate this work from those pressures, allowing researchers to stay focused on the science.
Harrington Discovery Institute, founded in 2012, has advanced 227 medicines in development, launched 47 companies, and moved 24 medicines into clinical trials. Cameron's address reflected on what drives that progress — including his leadership of the United Kingdom's 100,000 Genomes Project — and what needs to happen next to turn scientific breakthroughs into actual patient treatments.
He also addressed the challenges of international collaboration and the role governments can play in speeding access to new therapies.
The goal is ambitious but grounded: major advances in the next decade for patients who have been waiting far too long.
May 06, 2026
Benefiting patients worldwide, funding accelerates chronic lymphocytic leukemia research and rare cancer drug development through the Oxford-Harrington Rare Disease Centre and UH Seidman Cancer Center Continue Reading