Coinciding with the Rare Disease Day 2015 on February 28, the Parc Científic de Barcelona (PCB) hosts the exhibition «Menos raras» (Less rare) at the central corridor of the Torres building. The exhibition has been organized organised by the Catalan Association for Science Communication (ACCC) and sponsored by the Centre for Biomedical Network Research on Rare Diseases (CIBERER) and the National Centre for Genome Analysis (CNAG) with the collaboration of PCB.

The main objective of the travelling exhibition «Menos raras» is to promote public awareness of rare diseases and disseminate the effort made by different Spanish research groups, often in co-operation with other international research groups. Some of the centers who participate in the exhibition are CNAG and and Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB) based in PCB. Through specific cases such as Lowe’s, Wolfram’s or Williams syndrome, the exhibition will show to the audience some of the most outstanding research in this field.

The European Union considers diseases to be rare when they affect not more than 1 per 2 000 persons. If these diseases are rare, patients are numerous as there are some 7 000 known rare diseases (Source: www.orpha.net). They lack scientific and medical knowledge, they have low prevalence among population but they cause severe impairments to patients. In most cases, there is not an effective treatment to prevent them or relieve their symptoms. Most rare diseases are genetic diseases, implying that biomedical research in this field is relevant in the search for therapies and drugs for treatment.

►Exhibition panel [+] and video [+] of the National Centre for Genome Analysis (CNAG).
►Panel [+] of the Research Group on Neurogenetics at the Department of Genetics of UB/ IBUB.