NCATS Rare Diseases Are Not Rare! 2025 Challenge Winners and Honorable Mentions
Participants nationwide showcased their creativity for NCATS’ third Rare Diseases Are Not Rare! Challenge to help bring attention to the importance of rare diseases research and specifically increasing the development of treatment strategies for addressing multiple rare diseases at a time. NCATS selected 3 winners and 6 honorable mentions from an astonishing gallery of submissions. Browse the winning and honorable mention entries below and read more about the 2025 Challenge.
First Place
A version of this video with audio description is coming soon.
Title: Not So Rare
By: Pavan Gupta
Entity: Wax Labs
Second Place
A version of this video with audio description is coming soon.
Title: Rewriting the Code: Rare Diseases, Shared Hope.
By: Béatrice Bissig-Choisat, Augustus Wendell and Leonid Tsvetkov
Entity: Duke University
Third Place
A version of this video with audio description is coming soon.
Title: Rare Diseases Are Not Rare! STANA
By: Katie Boateng, Pamela Silberman and Dia Kline
Entity: Smell and Taste Association of North America (STANA)
Honorable Mentions
A version of this video with audio description is coming soon.
Title: The Secret Piece
By: Ali Mahvan and Kimberly Newcomb
Entity: TERASYNTH
A version of this video with audio description is coming soon.
Title: Rare Diseases Are Not Rare!
By: Debra Bellon
A version of this video with audio description is coming soon.
Title: Rare Diseases Are Not Rare!
By: Dean Wang
A version of this video with audio description is coming soon.
Title: One Story, Ten Thousand Echoes
By: Erika Mendence, Hayley Finch and Nancy Petersen
Entity: Children’s Mercy Kansas City
Click image to view a larger size.
Title: Different diagnoses. Same climb.
By: Alaina Thorne
The painting uses the image of diverse climbers ascending a mountain under the phrase “Different diagnoses. Same climb.” to symbolize how patients, families, clinicians, and researchers across rare diseases face shared systemic barriers and must work collaboratively to accelerate progress. Through elements like the summit flag and hidden zebras, the artist emphasizes that greater awareness, integrated research models, and cross-disease cooperation are essential for advancing treatment and therapeutic development in rare disease medicine.
Click image to view a larger size.
Title: The Threads That Tie
By: Stephanie Bouley
The Threads That Tie is a cross-stitched work that categorizes rare diseases into color-coded groups and incorporates over fifty community-submitted diagnoses to illustrate that, while individually rare, these conditions share common pathways, challenges and goals. Through a central unifying message and a visual progression from densely stitched disease names to none at all, the piece symbolizes collective effort, scientific interconnectedness, and hope for a future defined by cures rather than diagnoses.