SAN DIEGO & BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--YourDNA.com and Cure Rare Disease, a non-profit biotechnology company, today announced an ongoing initiative to collectively help increase access to the latest research and developments in the fight to help patients afflicted with rare genetic disorders.
The initiative is a collaboration from two groups on a mission to increase awareness of the prevalence of rare diseases in the United States, and the treatment options available to those afflicted.
With 7,000 currently identified rare diseases – classified as those diseases that affect fewer than 200,000 people – it is estimated that nearly 1 in 10 Americans is living with a rare disease.
A rise in consumer genetic testing has led many Americans to seek insights about what additional useful information might be gleaned from one’s personal genetics. As is often the case with emerging technology, this has given rise to ill-founded, unsubstantiated and irresponsible claims about what is possible today.
There are, however, important and serious aspects to the emerging genomic journey that will benefit all humankind and it is at this intersection that YourDNA and Cure Rare Disease hope to inform and advance the understanding of the state-of-the-art in developments.
To that end, Cure Rare Disease (CRD) founder Rich Horgan, a Blavatnik Life Science Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School, created CRD to answer his own personal relationship to Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD).
Horgan’s family has experienced three generations afflicted with the disease, and his brother is currently fighting DMD. Rich, together with some of the top researchers in the field of genomics including Dr. Timothy Yu, Dr. Louis Kunkel, Dr. Monkol Lek and others, are in a race to develop a therapeutic to beat DMD. Importantly, through this quest, researchers have discovered the genetic traits exhibited by DMD are also present in a handful of other rare diseases, giving hope that their work will yield positive outcomes for many more patient groups.
For more on the partnership and to view the powerful story behind CRD’s mission with Duchenne’s, visit YourDNA.com/CRD.
YourDNA
YourDNA rests at the intersection of two colliding trends, healthcare becoming more searchable by and accessible to the mass market, and genomic science beginning to deliver on the promise of precision medicine to future generations. We like to think of YourDNA as a place where real people meet genomics in order to learn about themselves. The company is a subsidiary of Aspect Health Inc. and is based in San Diego, California.
More at www.yourdna.com
Cure Rare Disease
Cure Rare Disease, a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, is forging collaborations with leading researchers & clinicians to develop customized therapeutics with unparalleled speed. The process is being applied in a range of rare, genetic disorders including but not limited to the following disorders: Muscular dystrophies (Duchenne, Limb-girdle, Becker’s), Charcot-Marie-Tooth, cystic fibrosis, Sickle Cell disease, Canavan disease and spinal muscular atrophy.
More at www.cureraredisease.org