International regulators collaborating on rare diseases

ARTICLE | Politics, Policy & Law

Rare disease crisis requires global approaches

By Steve Usdin, Washington Editor 

December 7, 2024 12:01 AM UTC

Terms like “orphan” and “ultrarare” have been effective organizing principles for research and public policy, but they can also obscure the scale and urgency of suffering caused by low-prevalence diseases. As the patient community has documented, while the number of people with each specific rare disease diagnosis is small, tens of millions of people around the world are affected by a rare disease and most have no effective treatments.

Geographic issues that are problematic for all drug development, such as inconsistencies in regulatory requirements, differences in incentives, and barriers to data collection, are especially troublesome for rare diseases.