A Glimpse into the Future of Rare Diseases Drug Development: The Latest Advances and Innovations

Safwan Kezbor, M.D., Global Medical Lead (Senior Medical Director), Clinical Development, Shionogi Inc

Rare disease conditions are defined as any disease that affects less than 200,000 people in the U.S. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), there are around 7,000 rare diseases impacting more than 30 million people in the U.S. Nevertheless, only about 10% of these diseases have approved treatments. Many treatment options are still symptomatic and supportive therapy for a large number of these diseases. This presents a huge unmet medical need for a significant number of patients and families dealing with these conditions. Although they are considered rare, these diseases can have a significant impact on patients and their families, disrupting their life and often leading to disability and premature death.

Clinical development for rare diseases is met with unique challenges. Some of these challenges are related to achieving positive clinical trial results to prove the safety and efficacy of the drug, with certain challenges around the clinical study design, population selection, statistical factors in an ultra-small size, and study results in quality and validation. Results of clinical trials for rare diseases may be impacted by small and often hard to reach study participants populations, heterogeneous samples, limited or unavailable disease natural history data, difficulties with selecting endpoints, challenges in balancing the eligibility criteria and defining biomarkers, lack of diversity in some genetic diseases, high costs of implementation often due to the extended duration for these studies, and ultimately higher risks of missing the clinical trial positive outcome due to the mix of the challenges described. This atmosphere surrounding the rare disease clinical trials can impose difficulties in obtaining sufficient clear-cut data to have a clear positive endpoint and indications that allow an agreement with regulators to move forward with the clinical program and to attract additional investments in this field. These factors often result in delays or failures in delivering accelerated treatment for patients with rare diseases.

Despite these challenges, there has been an encouraging increase in the percentage of drugs approved to treat rare diseases in the last few years, which provides new hope for patients. Recent developments have positioned the researchers in this field in a very good place to re-imagine the way clinical trials for rare disease indications are being approached. The newly emerged concepts and their applications may promise significant acceleration to the traditional rare disease drug development timelines and landscape. This article will highlight three of the most recent advancements that could have substantial potential in the future of rare disease drug development:

1-Precision Medicine:

One of the most significant advancements in rare disease drug development is the increasing use of precision medicine. Precision medicine is often defined as tailoring treatments to the individual patient based on their unique genetic disease characteristics, clinical manifestations, complications, lifestyle, and environmental factors. This approach can be specifically effective in rare diseases, where patients often have specific genetic mutations that shape their disease manifestations. By identifying these specific mutations and study them, tailored drugs can be developed to precisely targeting the patient’s condition. This approach can be more effective in patients with rare diseases. Clinical trials for rare diseases can benefit from precision medicine by identifying patients who are most likely to benefit from a particular treatment, and target the specific disease progress that matter the most. This can add substantial improvement to the efficiency of the drug development process. There is no doubt that precision medicine has the potential to revolutionize rare disease drug development and the future of the selections of target disease and specific study populations in clinical trials.

2-Gene therapy:

With continued investment in research and development, and solid commitment to address the unmet need for this “rare” patients’ population, it is likely that we will see significant progress in developing new treatments for these conditions.

One of the other important breakthroughs in rare disease drug development is the application of gene therapy. As a concept, gene therapy introduces a healthy copy of a defective or malfunctioning gene into a patient's cells using specific vectors to correct the underlying genetic disorder that causes the disease. The other application of gene therapy is to deliver therapeutic proteins to compensate for the malfunctioning gene. Large number of rare diseases are caused by a single gene disorder. Gene therapy method can potentially offer a cure for the disease compared to the other treatments that focus on symptoms alleviation and addressing the disease complications. Gene therapy innovation is still at early stages and faces several challenges, such as ensuring the safety and the long-term efficacy of the treatment, the integration to the healthcare system and the different models of insurance coverage, and expanding the accessibility to patients. It is clear that gene therapy has the capacity to radically change the treatment development for rare diseases. Some exciting promising leads related to results in clinical trials for certain rare diseases have provided such evidences. Examples of these recent positive outcomes are gene therapies for spinal muscular atrophy, inherited retinal diseases, certain types of blood cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

3-Artificial Intelligence (AI):

Technology innovations have played a major role in rare disease drug development. For example, advanced technologies have accelerated the time to identify potential drug candidates from large collections of potential compounds. The breakthrough development in computational biology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have introduced more efficiencies to the analysis of large datasets to identify new targets for drug development. These technologies have helped improving the drug discovery process by significantly decreasing the timelines and the associated cost for research and development and increasing the chances of detecting effective treatments for rare diseases. AI has the ability to transform the clinical development of drugs for rare diseases by leveraging machine learning, virtual drug screening, extrapolative modeling, and natural disease history prediction. AI can also help improving the quality of regulatory decision by providing evidence-based recommendations based on data from multiple sources and better predict of the benefit-risk ratio. It is predicted that AI will continue to evolve to address some of the challenges facing the use of such technology in medicine and healthcare such as some ethical and social implications concerns, privacy concerns, and bias surrounding algorithms and data selection.

Beside the recent advancements highlighted above, it is critical to note that the role of regulatory agencies and governments initiatives will be essential in the future of rare disease drug development as the researchers exploring there emerging approaches. Governments initiatives for rare disease drug development in recent years have provided significant boost to the interest and speed of developing new drug treatment for rare disease. Some of these initiatives includes the Orphan Drug Act, the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network, and the breakthrough therapy designation for drugs that show promising early results in treating serious or life-threatening conditions, including many rare diseases. It is vital to see the role of the regulatory agencies and governments initiatives evolve to match the speed of the evolving technology and the related high expectations of the rare disease patients’ community.

The future progress of rare disease drug development will require effective engagement with all the stakeholders to address the challenges and leverage the potential promising advancements.

In conclusion, recent developments in rare disease drug development have provided new hope for patients with these devastating disorders. With continued investment in research and development, and solid commitment to address the unmet need for this “rare” patients’ population, it is likely that we will see significant progress in developing new treatments for these conditions.