Orphan Drug Act – A Collosal Failure Considering Rare Disease Drug Statistics

For the past week, I have been obsessing over rare disease statistics ever since it was published that 80% of all rare diseases are ‘ultra orphans’ – affecting 6,000 people per disease state or less – and only 15% of all rare disease drug applications filed with the FDA are for ‘ultra orphans.’ Yesterday, I […]

Guidelines To Write and Submit an Orphan Drug Application For A Rare Disease

While working on our orphan drug application for Cyclodextrin for the treatment of Niemann Pick Type C disease, I searched the Internet looking for examples of an actual orphan drug application that was filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Not surprisingly, I could not find any ‘real applications’ that could be used as […]

FDAs Orphan Drug Workshop Featured in Wall Street Journal – Push To Cure Rare Diseases

Below is a story that ran in today’s Wall Street Journal (Page A 3) on the FDA workshop I attended a few week ago at the Keck Graduate Institute in Claremont, CA.  We filed an orphan drug application for Cyclodextrin for the treatment of Niemann Pick Type C disease, an ultra rare cholesterol disease that […]

FDA and EMA Forge Rare Disease Collaboration; Announcement Coincides with World Rare Disease Day 2010

In recognition of World Rare Disease Day 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced that they will collaborate together and now accept a single annual report from sponsors with an orphan drug designation for rare medical conditions. The joint announcement was made by Dr. Timothy Cote, director […]