NIH funds research consortia to study more than 200 rare diseases
$29 million awarded to expand NCATS’ collaborative Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network
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Physician scientists at 22 consortia will collaborate with representatives of 98 patient advocacy groups to advance clinical research and investigate new treatments for patients with rare diseases. The collaborations are made possible through awards by the National Institutes of Health — totaling about $29 million in fiscal year 2014 funding — to expand the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network (RDCRN), which is led by NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).
Adam L. Boxer, M.D., Ph.D., who leads the RDCRN-supported Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration (FTLD) Clinical Research Consortium, is exploring a group of progressive brain diseases that damage brain networks controlling behavior, cognition and movement. This image illustrates severe brain tissue loss over one year for patients with two types of FTLD: behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (red-yellow) and progressive supranuclear palsy (yellow, orange and blue).
There are several thousand rare diseases, of which only a few hundred have any treatments available. Combined, rare diseases affect an estimated 25 million Americans. Some obstacles to developing rare disease treatments include difficulties in diagnosis, widely dispersed patients and scientific experts, a perception of high risk, and a lack of data from natural history studies, which follow a group of people with a specific medical condition over time.
“NCATS seeks to tackle these challenges in an integrated way by working to identify common elements among rare diseases,” said NCATS Director Christopher P. Austin, M.D. “The RDCRN consortia provide a robust data source that enables scientists to better understand and share these commonalities, ultimately allowing us to accelerate the development of new approaches for diagnosing and treating rare diseases.”
Many patients with rare diseases often struggle to obtain an accurate diagnosis and find the right treatments. In numerous cases, RDCRN consortia have become centers of excellence for diagnosing and monitoring diseases that few clinicians see on a regular basis.
The RDCRN was established in 2003 by the NIH Office of Rare Diseases. NCATS now oversees the program, which is designed to advance medical research on rare diseases by facilitating collaboration, study enrollment and data sharing. Since the program’s launch, nearly 29,000 participants have been enrolled in network clinical studies. Currently, the network is composed of about 2,600 researchers, including NIH scientific program staff, academic investigators and members of 98 patient advocacy groups. Ninety-one studies are underway.
The network has enabled many translational research successes, including advances at the Urea Cycle Disorders Consortium External Web Site Policy at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. The consortium contributed to the development and U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of three drugs to treat urea cycle disorders. Patients with these disorders have a severe deficiency or are missing one or more of the first four enzymes in the urea cycle. These enzymes help regulate the body’s ability to break down ammonia and other undesirable products.
With the new awards, scientists at the 22 RDCRN consortia will conduct a minimum of two multisite clinical studies, including one longitudinal natural history study for a group of at least three related rare diseases. The RDCRN Data Management and Coordinating Center (DMCC) will continue to support the consortia by providing technologies and tools to collect and analyze standardized clinical research data, as well as supporting study design.
“The real strength of the collaboration among RDCRN consortia is the power to obtain high-quality data,” said Pamela M. McInnes, D.D.S., acting director of the NCATS Office of Rare Diseases Research and NCATS deputy director. “These data form an important base to better define patient populations, attract industry partners, share information on best practices and advance treatment options for the rare disease patient community.”
Direct involvement of patient advocacy groups in operations and strategy is a major feature of the network, and each consortium partners with relevant patient advocacy groups. Network consortia also establish training programs for clinical investigators interested in rare diseases research, provide information to the public about the rare diseases that they study, and enable proof of concept in clinical research studies.
