664. Are Thousands of Medical Cures Hiding in Plain Sight?

The podcast explores the potential of repurposing existing drugs for new diseases, highlighting the economic and scientific advantages, as well as the challenges in incentivizing this practice. David Fajgenbaum, co-founder of Every Cure and a physician-scientist, shares his personal experience of discovering that an existing drug, sirolimus, could treat his rare disease, Castleman's. He discusses Every Cure's approach to identifying promising drug-disease combinations using AI and biomedical knowledge graphs, citing lidocaine's potential use in reducing mortality in breast cancer patients as an example. The conversation also covers advanced market commitments as a tool for incentivizing research into new uses for generic drugs, and the limitations of the current patent system in this regard.