‘Too Rare to Care’? A New Center for Rare Diseases Hopes to Change That

July 22, 2026

A pipette dripping liquid into a cell array

(NYT) – A new nonprofit wants to streamline gene therapy for diseases often avoided by pharmaceutical companies — making treatment more like a routine procedure than a bespoke drug.

The catchphrase, said Dr. Wendy Chung of Boston Children’s Hospital, is “too rare to care.”

Now, Dr. Liu, Dr. Chung and their colleagues at the Broad Institute, Boston Children’s and the Jackson Laboratory are hoping to change that mentality. On Tuesday, they announced the start of a new nonprofit, the Center for Therapeutic Genetics, to develop gene therapy treatments that can be used and reused in disease after disease.

Treatments developed by the center would be viewed more like routine procedures than drugs. In each case, all that would be changed are the instructions to a gene editor. There would be no need to start anew for every patient. (Read More)