Telangana pharma expert helps rare disease patients in the US.

This man's story is truly remarkable; he came from the small town of Pandithapuram in the district of Khammam, but now he holds half a dozen faculty positions at a highly regarded university in the United States.

The Indian Organization for Rare Diseases (IORD), founded by Dr Ramaiah Muthyala in 2005, is a non-profit organisation that provides a voice for the millions of people who suffer in silence from rare diseases.

He attended a local college for his bachelor's degree in science (BSc). He has two doctorates: drug molecule isolation from plants (from the University of Saugor, MP, India) and drug synthesis (from the University of East Anglia, UK). He has also been inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

In addition to his many other roles as a professor at the University of Minnesota in the United States, where he runs an active research lab, he serves as Senior Associate Director of the Center for Drug Design and Associate Director of the Center for Orphan Drug Development. He has registered 13 patents in the United States.

Before coming to the United States, Dr Muthyala worked in the pharmaceutical industry in India, first at Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited (IDPL) in Hyderabad and then at the CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory in Pune. The trip was that simple, you know. I fell and got back up in due time," he said.

He devotes his time and energy to raising public and institutional awareness of rare diseases. As head of IORD, he oversees advocacy initiatives that seek out people affected by rare diseases and provides them with the resources they need to lead as normal a life as possible.

Dr Muthyala told Telangana Today that his childhood memory of a neighbourhood boy who struggled with a condition like Cerebral Palsy inspired him to found the IORD and work for those with rare diseases.