Anne R. Pariser, M.D.

Anne Pariser joined NCATS in January 2017 as the deputy director of the Office of Rare Diseases Research (ORDR). As of February 2018, she is the ORDR director and works to advance diagnosis and treatment for rare diseases through research. Pariser comes to NCATS from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where she had worked since 2000, mainly on the development of drug and biological products for rare diseases. Most recently, she served as associate director for knowledge management in the FDA’s Office of Translational Sciences, which is part of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). Prior to serving in that role, Pariser was the associate director for rare diseases in the Office of New Drugs (OND) at CDER, where she established the Rare Diseases Program (RDP) in 2010 to support, facilitate and accelerate the development of therapeutics for rare diseases. Before founding RDP, she was a medical officer and team leader in OND, where she worked almost exclusively on the review and regulation of products for rare genetic disorders. Pariser has been involved in numerous collaborations within the FDA and with drug developers, governmental agencies, patient groups and other stakeholders to further the development of treatments for rare diseases. In addition to her government service, she works as a physician volunteer in the Arlington Free Clinic.

Pariser received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and her medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., where she also completed her training in internal medicine. Pariser is board certified in internal medicine.


Pariser’s research interests include the advancement of regulatory science to facilitate the efficient development of rare disease therapeutics, natural history studies, and the use of biomedical informatics to promote high-quality data capture to inform rare disease research and programs.