The NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Program: bonding scientists and clinicians

The majority of the biomedical research workforce and funds are focused on studying common diseases and the development of drugs to treat them. However, some of the most remarkable discoveries in physiology and medicine are uncovered by studying rare conditions, because the importance of certain molecular mechanisms is revealed only when their dysfunction results in disease. In 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Program (UDP), which recruits and selects patients who suffer from diseases of unknown etiology, and studies their causes at the clinical, genetic and cellular levels. In this Editorial, we discuss how the UDP has enabled the discovery of several new diseases and disease mechanisms through collaborations between clinical and basic science teams, using the power of both clinical medicine and biological models. Establishing programs with similar infrastructure at other centers around the world could help to benefit patients, their families and the entire medical community, by enhancing research productivity for rare and novel diseases.