IRDiRC dreams bigger

After presiding over rapid growth in the global effort to diagnose and treat rare diseases over the past six years, the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) announced three new goals, one of which is finding new therapies for 1,000 indications.

In 2011, NIH and the European Commission created the consortium as a global coalition that has now grown to 52 government and non-profit funding bodies, biotech and pharmaceutical companies, patient advocacy groups and individual researchers. IRDiRC's founders wanted a goal-oriented collaboration like the Human Genome Project, but sought to also include companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Roche that could aid in drug development...