Dr. David Fajgenbaum, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, found his miracle drug, and now wants to do the same for others, writes Amy Dockser Marcus for The Wall Street Journal.

Fajgenbaum was diagnosed with Castleman disease when he was a third-year medical student. He started studying his own blood to see if he could find a drug that would tamp down his immune system and stop relapses. He found it in sirolimus, which is used to prevent transplant patients from rejecting a new kidney. He takes the drug daily and has been in remission for a decade.

His new goal is to match patients with existing drugs on a large scale. He founded the nonprofit Every Cure, which recently received funding of $48 million from the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.

Fajgenbaum and his team will use the funds to create a drug-repurposing database and algorithms to help patients, doctors, and researchers find drugs for untreated diseases.

“There are drugs sitting in plain sight that are going to help patients right now,” said Matt Might, director of the Hugh Kaul Precision Medicine Institute at the University of Alabama who is working with Every Cure on the project.

Read more about David Fajgenbaum in The Wall Street Journal.

_____