We’re proud to share that Every Cure Co-Founder and President, Dr. David Fajgenbaum, has been named to the 2025 TIME100 Health list, a prestigious recognition honoring the 100 most influential individuals in health today.

This honor celebrates Dr. Fajgenbaum’s extraordinary contributions to medicine, innovation, and patient impact. But for him, this work is deeply personal.

While still a third-year medical student, Dr. Fajgenbaum became critically ill with a mysterious and life-threatening illness. After experiencing severe fatigue and swelling, he walked down the hallway of his medical school and into the emergency room—where doctors told him his organs were shutting down. Within weeks, he was read his last rites. He was 25 years old and dying from Castleman disease, a rare and little-understood inflammatory condition.

Refusing to accept a fate without answers, Dr. Fajgenbaum began to conduct his own research. He discovered a potential treatment—a decades-old immunosuppressant called sirolimus—and became the first person with his subtype of Castleman disease to take it. The drug worked. It not only saved his life, but it also changed the treatment protocol for others battling the same disease.

Driven by that life-saving breakthrough, Dr. Fajgenbaum asked a bold question: How many other existing drugs could be repurposed to save lives—if only someone looked?

In 2022, he co-founded Every Cure, a nonprofit organization dedicated to identifying new uses for existing FDA-approved drugs. Using artificial intelligence, Every Cure systematically analyzes 4,000+ drugs against 18,500 diseases, uncovering overlooked treatment possibilities and connecting them with doctors and patients. In 2024, the team’s groundbreaking approach was recognized with a $48 million investment from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to scale their AI-powered platform, MATRIX.

Already, Every Cure has advanced or identified 14 repurposed treatments across five rare diseases—reuniting families, restoring health, and creating stories of hope, like a father walking his daughter down the aisle and a young woman becoming a nurse after receiving a life-saving treatment.

This recognition by TIME is not just a milestone for Dr. Fajgenbaum—it’s a call to action. As he says:

“All I can think about is the impact and how many lives we can touch. It’s just a matter of how fast we can do it, because we’re in a race against time.”

We couldn’t be prouder to have Dr. Fajgenbaum leading the charge. His vision and relentless commitment are a reminder that sometimes, the cure already exists—we just need to find it.

Learn more about Every Cure’s mission and join us in our fight to unlock the full potential of every drug to help every patient.