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To mark the upcoming launch of our Rare Diseases article collection, we will be talking with three researchers in a special rare disease themed tweetchat next week.

Join us September 29 to discuss the challenges of rare disease research. We’ll start at 1PM EST. Follow the #F1000Talks hashtag, or our @F1000Research Twitter account to keep up with the conversation. The chat will last about 30 minutes, and there will be time for you to ask your questions.

Although you’ll need a Twitter account to be able to ask questions, you can follow the conversation even without an account. (Just click any tweet to see threaded responses.)

 

Our guests:

Sean Ekins (@collabchem) is a chemist with experience working in the pharmaceutical industry, start-ups and foundations. He is also a consultant at Collaborations in Chemistry, and works on various projects related to new technologies in science. One of areas of interest is rare disease research, and he is the guest editor of the upcoming F1000Research Rare Diseases collection.

Heather Etchevers (@etche_homo) is a developmental biologist with the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), studying embryological causes of human birth defects.  She is also a parent of a child affected by a rare disease, and is using her scientific expertise to set up a biobank and registry of large and giant congenital melanocytic nevi. A crowdfunding round to raise money to hire a technician is currently running, and Heather has written about funding for rare disease research in the Guardian.

Ethan Perlstein (@eperlste) is the founder of Perlstein Lab, a biotech start-up focused on orphan drug development. He is also an expert on crowdfunding for scientific research: As a research fellow at Princeton, he raised over 25 thousand dollars in crowdfunding to fund a research project to study the effects of amphetamine and methamphetamine on the brain.