David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc, is a physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the youngest professors to receive tenure in the history of Penn Medicine, co-Founder & President of the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network, co-Founder & President of Every Cure, and the national bestselling author of ‘Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope Into Action.‘ Dr. Fajgenbaum is also a patient battling a deadly disease which he discovered a repurposed treatment for that is saving his life and others. Through his work at Penn and the CDCN, he has also identified and advanced 16 other repurposed treatments for diseases they weren’t initially intended for. He recently co-founded Every Cure to unlock the full potential of FDA-approved medicines to treat every disease they possibly can and serves on the Board of Directors for the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA.
One of the youngest awardees of multiple top NIH and FDA grants, Dr. Fajgenbaum has published scientific papers in high-impact journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the Journal of Clinical Investigation, including a paper selected as one of the top innovations in science and medicine of 2020. He has been profiled by The New York Times, TODAY, GMA, USA TODAY, Forbes 30 Under 30, and others and received numerous awards, including the 2016 Atlas Award along with then VP Joe Biden, the 2022 NDRI Service to Science Award along with Nobel Laureates Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, and the 2023 Philadelphia Citizen of the Year Award. Dr. Fajgenbaum earned a BS from Georgetown University, MSc from the University of Oxford, MD from the University of Pennsylvania, and MBA from The Wharton School.