Harrison Ford to fight disease in next film

Harrison Ford, currently starring in the latest Indiana Jones instalment, will be duelling with a disease instead of Communists in his next film, Crowley.

The 65-year-old actor has signed on to star in the drama, based on the true story of John and Aileen Crowley, whose two children had a rare genetic disorder.

Ford will play the maverick scientist whohas a potential cure for Pompe disease, a disorder related to muscular dystrophy that afflicts fewer than 10,000 people worldwide.

Ford will executive produce the film with a screenplay based on a Wall Street Journal article and book, The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million and Bucked the Medical Establishment in a Quest to Save His Children, by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Geeta Anand.

"This is a story that has universal, relatable themes particularly the lengths parents would go to protect their kids," CBS Films CEO Amy Baer told Variety magazine.

In the late 1990s, the Crowleys discovered two of their three children had the debilitating disease, which often results in death by age five.

John Crowley quit his management consulting job to take work with a pharmaceutical giant in order to learn more about possible cures. The Crowleys moved from San Francisco to New Jersey to be closer to specialists who knew more about Pompe disease.

In 2000, John Crowley left his job at the bigger company to head up Novazyme Pharmaceuticals Inc., a tiny biotech firm that had a promising therapeutic approach for the disorder. The Crowleys mortgaged their home to keep the fledgling firm alive.

In the end, Novazyme created a new drug therapy called Myozyme, which doesn't cure the disease but keeps it from doing any more damage, and the Crowley children are still alive.