Drug discovery in rare indications: opportunities and challenges

Over the past decade, the number of new therapies developed for the treatment of rare diseases continues to increase. The most rapid growth has been in the development of new drugs for oncology indications. One focus in drug discovery for oncology indications is the development of targeted therapies for select patient subgroups characterized by genetic alterations. The identification of these patient subgroups has increased in the past decade and has resulted in a corresponding increase in the development of new drugs for genetically defined patient subgroups. As an example of the development of new therapeutics for rare indications, I describe here the drug discovery efforts leading to the development of DOT1L inhibitors for the treatment of MLL-rearranged leukemia.