David Fajgenbaum: Discovering Cures Through Drug Repurposing and AI

A Near-Death Experience and a Rare Disease

• 💡 David Fajgenbaum, a medical student, faced a life-threatening battle with Castleman disease in 2010, a rare condition where the immune system attacks vital organs.
• ⚠️ Despite doctors attempting all known treatments, Fajgenbaum's condition worsened, leading to his family saying their goodbyes.
• 🚀 A combination of seven chemotherapies, not intended for his disease, miraculously saved his life, allowing him to return to medical school.

The Power of Drug Repurposing

• 🧠 Fajgenbaum realized that waiting for new drug development was too slow and costly, leading him to explore drug repurposing.
• 💊 Examples like Viagra (repurposed from heart disease to a pediatric lung disease) and thalidomide (from birth defects to leprosy and cancer) illustrate how drugs can treat multiple diseases with shared underlying mechanisms.
• ✅ Doctors can prescribe FDA-approved drugs off-label, a practice common in one in four prescriptions in the US.
• 🔬 By studying his own blood, Fajgenbaum identified a transplant drug, sirolimus, that could regulate his overactive immune system, leading to over 11 years of remission.

Founding Every Cure and Leveraging AI

• ✨ Fajgenbaum co-founded Every Cure, a nonprofit dedicated to unlocking the full potential of existing drugs for various diseases.
• 🎯 The organization has already advanced 14 repurposed treatments, saving thousands of lives.
• 📊 Every Cure utilizes artificial intelligence to scan global knowledge of drugs and diseases, predicting promising treatment opportunities much faster than human teams.
• 💰 The primary barrier to drug repurposing is profitability, especially for generic drugs and rare diseases, creating a gap that Every Cure aims to fill.

Impact and Future Vision

• 🚀 The Audacious Project provided crucial funding, enabling Every Cure to build an AI-powered engine to repurpose 15-25 treatments by 2030.
• 🌟 The AI platform has already saved lives, including a Castleman disease patient who was nearing hospice care.
• 🧩 The platform also identified leucovorin, a cheap vitamin derivative, which has shown remarkable improvements in speech for children with specific antibodies against the folate receptor.
• 💖 Fajgenbaum urges the public to share potential repurposed drug ideas, donate, and raise awareness to ensure no patient suffers when a life-saving cure might already exist.