Medable, the industry-leading technology platform for patient-centered clinical trials, today announced a partnership with non-profit Every Cure, which officially launched in September in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative to scale up an innovative “drug repurposing” research approach to identify treatments for rare diseases.
By many estimates, there are roughly 9,000 diseases that do not have an FDA-approved treatment, and it takes many years – often decades – and billions of dollars to bring a cure to fruition. Every Cure is on a mission to save more lives by identifying new uses for existing drugs and conducting clinical trials of the most promising treatments to evaluate their effectiveness for FDA-approval and/or off-label clinical use.
Every Cure was co-founded by Dr. David Fajgenbaum, who was diagnosed with Castleman Disease in 2010 while he was in medical school. Castleman Disease is a rare condition, and at the time of his diagnosis, there was no known cure and no drugs in development. As described in his memoir, Chasing My Cure, Dr. Fajgenbaum identified an existing drug, sirolimus, that could be repurposed to treat Castleman. Because of his discovery, Dr. Fajgenbaum is alive and in remission for more than eight years. His team has repeated this approach of identifying new uses for approved treatments 10 more times for Castleman disease, cancer, and COVID-19. He launched Every Cure to replicate and scale his research process to repurpose existing therapies to treat rare diseases.
“David Fajgenbaum’s story is an inspiration, and it reinforces the critical need for innovation in clinical research,” said Dr. Michelle Longmire, CEO and co-founder of Medable. “We live in an era of exponential improvements in medicine, but traditional clinical trials are a bottleneck in the system – and only yield 50 new FDA-approved treatments per year. With new technologies and new research techniques, we believe it’s possible to drastically increase the number of therapies in development – and Every Cure will be an important leader in driving that change.”
Medable will partner with Every Cure by providing specialized software and services to conduct global, remote clinical trials for drug repurposing candidates. Medable’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform has been used in more than 300 decentralized and hybrid clinical trials, serving over one million patients and research participants in 60 countries. Medable customers have achieved impressive results – including 200 percent faster enrollment and 50 percent cost reductions – helping to accelerate delivery of effective therapies to patients.
Dr. Fajgenbaum unveiled Every Cure’s plans at the Clinical Global Initiative meeting held in New York, where Fajgenbaum was a featured speaker. Every Cure has developed a tool called the MATRIX that uses machine learning and AI to identify and rank promising treatments. A pilot study uncovered 106 promising drug repurposing opportunities in the first 147 diseases. In partnership with Medable, Every Cure will conduct clinical trials of the most promising and high impact opportunities for FDA-approval of an existing drug with a new indication.
“Patients around the world die every day from diseases that could have been cured by a drug sitting on the shelf at their local pharmacy,” said Dr. Fajgenbaum. “Every Cure is dedicated to unlocking all diseases that existing drugs can treat by developing a comprehensive open-source database of drug repurposing opportunities and launching clinical trials of the most promising treatments. We’re thrilled to partner with Michelle and the Medable team to bring our vision to life and help address this critical industry challenge together.”
For more information about Every Cure:
- Visit Every Cure.org;
- Read Dr. Fajgenbaum’s personal story here;
- Watch Dr. Fajgenbaum’s talk at the Clinton Global Initiative here;
- Click here to read a fireside chat between Dr. Longmire and Dr. Fajgenbaum;
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