February 28th 2023 is Rare Disease Day, the annual focal point of the globally-coordinated movement on rare diseases, working towards equity in social opportunity, healthcare, and access to diagnosis and therapies for people living with a rare disease.
Currently, there are an estimated 7,000 known rare diseases – impacting as many as 300 million people across the globe.
That means about 4% of the total world population is affected by a rare disease at any given time.
Rare diseases are those which affect fewer than 1 in 2,000 people. Although they’re individually uncommon, there are more than 7,000 such conditions and 1 in 17 people will be affected by a rare disease at some point in their lives – equating to 3.5 million people in the UK. Similarly, in the US this number extends to 30 million Americans affected by rare diseases.
The Symbiosis team is passionate about helping drug developers/sponsors overcome the barriers that can hold back access to treatments for rare conditions. We are very proud of our work in this area and look forward to continuing to support our clients, their patients, families and carers affected by rare diseases.
Symbiosis CEO, Colin MacKay fully backs the international day of awareness for rare diseases and commented on its importance with the following:
“Given the long-standing historical focus of the drug development industry on developing medicines to improve the health of as many people as possible, it is heartening today, on Rare Disease Day, to see the increasing profile and efforts by the industry to target those diseases which impact smaller sub-groups of our population, where new science and emerging technologies are being applied and leveraged successfully in pursuit of safe and efficacious novel treatments.
Historically, few of the 7,000 known rare diseases have attracted significant bio/pharmaceutical R&D investment, however there is evidence of increasing regulatory support for initiatives aimed at developing new drugs to treat rare diseases and the pursuit of possible cures. With the astoundingly successful validation of gene therapy in the market in recent years, for example, companies with that kind of technical expertise are increasingly targeting rare diseases. As a specialist sterile manufacturer of clinical and commercial bio-pharmaceuticals for a broad range of types of drugs, Symbiosis is particularly proud today to be a proactive contributor to the development of these next-generation medicines for the treatment of rare diseases and we are excited by the opportunity to support many more in the future.”
Find out how Symbiosis can support your next rare disease therapy manufacturing, contact us today.
