The high cost and amount of time it takes to develop drugs has people looking for alternative strategies in finding new treatments. One such approach is called “repurposing” or finding new uses for already approved drugs.
This is particularly compelling for rare diseases where small patient populations may not be as compelling for drug developers to make treatments for, leaving the community’s need for therapeutics largely unmet.
We spoke to Bruce Bloom, President and Chief Science Officer of Cures Within Reach, which launched the crowdsourcing platform CureAccelerator to fund repurposing research for rare diseases.
Bloom discussed the benefits of repurposing, how the CureAccelerator will work, and why he believes the initiative could help to build a new approach to repurposing research and developing treatments for rare disease.
RARECast is a weekly series by Daniel S. Levine. Levine is an award-winning business journalist who has reported on the life sciences, economic development, and business policy issues throughout his 25-year career. He founded Levine Media Group in 2013, which produces The Bio Report and RARECast podcasts. Read his full bio here.
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