Drugs for rare diseases: The blessing of being orphans

The incentives provided by Orphan Drugs Regulations have promoted the development of drugs that effectively ameliorate the course of serious conditions that had previously been neglected. However, the treatment of each individual patient with any of these drugs - the so-called 'orphan drugs' - is so expensive, that the total burden for publicly funded Health care Service is enormous and may become unsustainable. Italy is no exception, if it is to abide by its basic tenet of providing access to essential medicines - free of charge - to the entire population. We do not see any glimpses of improvement on the horizon: therefore we suggest that radical change must be introduced. First, price negotiation ought to take place at the European level, not at the member state level. Second, pricing should take into account not only value for patients, but also costs of research and development (R&D) plus production. Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) should also support research focused on optimizing the effective use of orphan drugs in clinical practice. The challenges are complex: but AIFA is recognized as an authoritative body, and may be able to coagulate the agreement of other regulatory agencies for the ultimate purpose of achieving, for each of the orphan drugs a more reasonable 'European price'.