In 2010, Every Cure’s cofounder Dr. David Fajgenbaum was a third-year medical student when he became critically ill with Castleman disease (CD). He spent months hospitalized in critical condition and nearly died five times. David was told there were no more options for his disease and waiting for a new treatment – requiring billions of research dollars and 10-15 years – was not a possibility. Repurposing an existing drug was his only hope. David launched an initiative to find treatments to save his life and the lives of others with CD. He and his team discovered an overactive pathway in his blood and tested a 25-year-old drug called sirolimus that was approved as an immunosuppressant after kidney transplants but had never been used for CD, to block that pathway. As a result of this repurposed drug, David has been in remission for 10+ years.
On a mission to unlock the full potential of every drug
In 15 years, Every Cure has helped advance 28 repurposed drugs for multiple diseases — 14 of these were directly led by Dr. Fajgenbaum. These repurposed drugs have improved at least 30-40K lives globally. Our approach democratizes biomedical insights from both public and proprietary data, so repurposing can happen faster and more frequently, allowing everyone to access life-saving treatments. Until recently, we repurposed drugs for specific rare diseases, like Castleman disease (CD). But AI enables us to rapidly identify connections across all drugs and all diseases, simultaneously, to find the highest-impact opportunities. While pharmaceutical companies focus on the highest-priced drugs and most common diseases, we focus on the 80% of drugs that are low cost and generic. We focus on patient impact, rather than on patient population size or profit.
Co-founders Dr. Grant Mitchell and Tracey Sikora each bring years of experience in drug repurposing. After completing medical school and business school along with his classmate, David Fajgenbaum, Dr. Mitchell led a team at McKinsey & Co. to mine medical records and real-world data in pursuit of new uses for drugs. This work, done individually for one drug or one disease at a time, led Dr. Mitchell to understand the power of scaling these approaches to all drugs and all diseases. Tracey Sikora studied repurposed drugs in rare diseases, including Niemann Pick C, MPS I, Familial Hypercholesterolemia, and others. She led clinical trials by working alongside partners at biotech companies and rare disease organizations, developing study protocols that may adapt to the challenging realities of conducting clinical research in the real-world. Inspired by the innovative clinical trials launched for COVID-19 research, Tracey is bringing bold plans for efficient, well-executed clinical trials to our team.
Together, with partners in medicine, pharma, tech, and philanthropy, we are building out a comprehensive, open-source database of drug-repurposing opportunities.
Having established deep credibility across the drug repurposing landscape, we strive to be the vital connector within the ecosystem, uniting partners and fostering collaboration to unlock the full potential of existing medicines.
We are deeply passionate about uncovering repurposed drugs for patients who are suffering while there is a drug sitting at their neighborhood pharmacy, and want to scale drug repurposing to help each and every patient who may benefit by using an already existing drug.
Learn more about how you can help pursue this mission.