Episode 18: Resurfacing Old Drugs: Lessons From "Chasing My Cure"

David Fajgenbaum (@DavidFajgenbaum), MD, MBA, MSc, assistant professor in the department of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the associate director of patient impact for the Penn Orphan Disease Center, joins the show to talk about his experience writing and receiving feedback on the national bestseller “Chasing My Cure” as a survivor of Castleman disease – a commentary on how he turned hope into action and discovered an old drug that had never been researched in Castleman disease into a personal life-saver. Dr. Fajgenbaum then details the Cure Drug Repurposing Collaboratory, a public/private relationship between the FDA, the NIH, the Critical Path Institute, and academics like himself with the goal of identifying drugs with approved indications in one disease that have efficacy in other diseases. Additionally, he shares the work of the CORONA Project, the COVID-19 registry of new and repurposed agents that seeks to record any drug given to any patient with COVID-19 for the purposes of research and understanding the disease.View Dr. Fajgenbaum’s viral Tik Tok https://twitter.com/DavidFajgenbaum/status/1354478246826569728View Chadi’s book review of “Chasing My Cure” https://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2019/12/16/chasing-my-cure-a-book-review/