From the 1970s onwards, Sigma-Tau focused on experimenting with new medicines for rare diseases - a commitment that in 1984 would cause it to become the fourth largest pharmaceutical company in the world and assignee in the United States of an Orphan Drug Designation,[REF] subsequently receiving another seven.
Fondazione Sigma-Tau was created in 1986 as a charitable organization with the aim of developing research, promoting scientific and cultural progress and the safeguarding of the results of scientific investigation.