Partnership to Expand Effective Gene Therapies for Rare Diseases

Posted on November 2nd, 2021 by Dr. Francis Collins

Rare diseases aren’t so rare. Collectively, up to 30 million Americans, many of them children, are born with one of the approximately 7,000 known rare diseases. Most of these millions of people also share a common genetic feature: their diseases are caused by an alteration in a single gene.

Many of these alterations could theoretically be targeted with therapies designed to correct or replace the faulty gene. But there have been significant obstacles in realizing this dream. The science of gene therapy has been making real progress, but pursuing promising approaches all the way to clinical trials and gaining approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still very difficult. Another challenge is economic: for the rarest of these conditions (which is most of them), the market is so small that most companies have no financial incentive to pursue them.

To overcome these obstacles and provide hope for those with rare diseases, we need a new way of doing things. One way to do things differently—and more efficiently—is the recently launched Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium (BGTC). It is a bold partnership of NIH, the FDA, 10 pharmaceutical companies, several non-profit organizations, and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health [1]. Its aim: optimize the gene therapy development process and help fill the significant unmet medical needs of people with rare diseases.

The BGTC, which is also part of NIH’s Accelerating Medicines Partnership® (AMP®), will enable the easier, faster, and cheaper pursuit of “bespoke” gene therapies, meaning made for a particular customer or user. The goal of the Consortium is to reduce the cost of gene therapy protocols and increase the likelihood of success, making it more attractive for companies to invest in rare diseases and bring treatments to patients who desperately need them.

Fortunately, there is already some precedent. The BGTC effort builds on a pilot project led by NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) known as Platform Vector Gene Therapy (PaVe-GT). This pilot project has helped to develop adeno-associated viruses (AAVs), which are small benign viruses engineered in the lab to carry a therapeutic gene. They are commonly used in gene therapy-related clinical trials of rare diseases.

Since the launch of PaVe-GT two years ago, the project has helped to introduce greater efficiency to gene therapy trials for rare disease. It’s also offered a way to get around the standard one-disease-at-a-time approach to therapeutic development that has stymied progress in treating rare conditions.

The BGTC will now continue to advance in-depth understanding of basic AAV biology and develop better gene therapies for rare and also common diseases. The consortium aims to develop a standard set of analytic tests to improve the production and functional assessment of AAVs and therapeutic genes. Such tests will be broadly applicable and will bring the needed manufacturing efficiency required for developing gene therapies for very rare conditions.

The BGTC also will work toward bringing therapies sooner to individuals in need. To start, BGTC-funded research will support four to six clinical trials, each focused on a distinct rare disease. While the details haven’t yet been decided, these diseases are expected to be rare, single-gene diseases that lack gene therapies or commercial programs in development, despite having substantial groundwork in place to enable the rapid initiation of preclinical and clinical studies.

Through these trials, the BGTC will chart a path from studies in animal models of disease to human clinical trials that cuts years off the development process. This will include exploring methods to streamline regulatory requirements and processes for FDA approval of safe and effective gene therapies, including developing standardized approaches to preclinical testing.

This work promises to be a significant investment in helping people with rare diseases. The NIH and private partners will contribute approximately $76 million over five years to support BGTC-funded projects. This includes about $39.5 million from the participating NIH institutes and centers, pending availability of funds. The NCATS, which is NIH’s lead for BGTC, is expected to contribute approximately $8 million over five years.

Today, only two rare inherited conditions have FDA-approved gene therapies. The hope is this investment will raise that number and ultimately reduce the many significant challenges, including health care costs, faced by families that have a loved one with a rare disease. In fact, a recent study found that health care costs for people with a rare disease are three to five times greater than those for people without a rare disease [2]. These families need help, and BGTC offers an encouraging new way forward for them.

References:

[1] NIH, FDA and 15 private organizations join forces to increase effective gene therapies for rare diseases. NIH news release, October 27, 2021.

[2] The IDeaS initiative: pilot study to assess the impact of rare diseases on patients and healthcare systems. Tisdale, A., Cutillo, C.M., Nathan, R. et al. Orphanet J Rare Dis 16, 429 (2021).

Links:

FAQ About Rare Diseases (National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences/NIH)

Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium (BGTC)

Platform Vector Gene Therapy (NCATS)

Accelerating Medicines Partnership® (AMP®) (NIH)

NIH Support: National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; National Eye Institute; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; National Human Genome Research Institute; National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases; National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research; National Institute of Mental Health; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders; and NIH’s BRAIN Initiative.