Rare Disease Day: FDA to Offer Orphan Drug Development Workshop
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A rare or orphan disease is defined in the US as one that affects fewer than 200,000 at any given time. It is estimated that there are 6000 to 8000 rare diseases in the world today. Because the number of patients afflicted with orphan diseases is so small, drug companies have historically been reluctant to invest money to discover and develop new treatments for them. The dearth of treatments for rare diseases induced Congress to pass the Orphan Drug Act in 1983 which provided market exclusivity, tax breaks and incentives and regulatory help for companies to development new drugs for orphan disease indications.
While many current blockbuster drugs including recombinant human insulin, growth hormone and erythropoietin originally garnered regulatory approval after receiving orphan status in the late 1980s, most big pharma and biotechnology companies (except Genzyme) largely abandoned orphan drug development until recently. The renewed interest in orphan drug development has been primarily driven by the demise of big pharma’s blockbuster business model that began in the early 2000s. The search for new, non-blockbuster drugs and fresh markets is what induced Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, to recently inked a multimillion dollar deal with Protalix Biotherapeutics, a small biopharmaceutical company developing a new treatment for Gaucher disease—an orphan indication.
Because of renewed interest and the ever increasing need for new orphan drugs, the FDA’s Office of Orphan Products Development is offering an Orphan Drug Designation Workshop that will provide a unique opportunity for all potential drug sponsors—including biotechnology companies, pharmaceutical firms and academic institutions—to learn about the application process for orphan drug designation.
The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) is a co-sponsor of the workshops, which will take place on February 25-26 at Keck Graduate Institute and August 3-4 at the University of Minnesota.
Participants are encouraged to bring specific product proposals for at least one candidate orphan drug that holds promise for the treatment of a rare disease. A significant portion of the workshop will be dedicated to preparing applications, including one-on-one guidance sessions with FDA staff members. FDA will keep product and disease information confidential.
Final applications can be submitted to the FDA at the close of each workshop. For information or to register:
FDA Workshop Brochure
Registration for the February Workshop
Finally, February 28th is Rare Disease Day. The event is sponsored by the EURODIS a European advocacy group that promotes awareness and research for rare diseases. NORD and Discovery Health are also sponsoring the day.
Until next time....
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!
It goes without saying that the competition for jobs in the life sciences industry is extremely fierce. This means that job candidates must use whatever means possible to differentiate themselves from the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others applying for the same job!
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The loss of over 200,000 pharmaceutical jobs over the past three years has been mainly driven by the anticipated loss of revenue from blockbuster drugs that will lose patent protection by 2013. While drug makers frequently cite blockbuster patent expiry as the reason for the need to downsize, they rarely provide the business and economic metrics, numbers and statistics that have influenced their decisions. 
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Britain’s largest pharmaceutical company
