Rare Disease Research Gets NIH Funding
May 27, 2009 by Liz Lewis
Filed under Announcements, Medicine, Treatment
Drug companies are always keen to get on the bandwagon when it comes to diseases that affect millions. Makes sense, I guess. After all, when you running a business, you want to create product that will be used by the masses.
Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of rare and neglected diseases (around 6,000 according to the NIH) under researched and under treated because they only occur in a small percentage of the population.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) is hoping to change this with a influx of funds – to the tune of $120 million over five years – through a new program called Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND)
This program has been set up to support and encourage researchers in government, academic, and companies to focus on the often called ‘orphan diseases.’
But will this work? After all, the funding really is only a drop in the bucket when you consider that it costs around $1 billion to take a drug to market.
However, when the bucket is empty, every drop counts.
