Worldwide Clinical Trials Partners with Every Cure to Accelerate Discovery of Treatments for Rare Disease Patients

Rare Daily Staff

Worldwide Clinical Trials, a global, full-service contract research organization, has partnered with Every Cure, a nonprofit organization that unlocks new uses for existing approved drugs by leveraging data, artificial intelligence, and efficient clinical trials.

Through this new partnership, Worldwide will serve as Every Cure’s clinical trial and drug development partner. The CRO will use its clinical development and rare disease expertise to assist in identifying links between rare diseases and generic drugs on the market—all facilitated through the nonprofit’s comprehensive, open-source database of drug-repurposing opportunities. Once links and drug targets are identified and validated, Worldwide will run clinical trials for Every Cure with expedited timelines and a goal to unlock the full potential of existing medications to treat every disease possible and help rare disease patients around the world.

“The combination of Every Cure’s computational AI algorithm with Worldwide’s clinical trial expertise will have a substantial impact on finding and advancing cures for years to come,” said David Fajgenbaum, Every Cure co-founder and director of the Center for Cytokine Storm Treatment & Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania.

Every Cure is on a mission to alleviate suffering for the 300 million people globally who are battling diseases with no approved treatments. The nonprofit launched in 2022 in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative to scale up an innovative “drug-repurposing” approach to identify treatments for rare diseases – generally considered to be a disease that affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States or 5 in 10,000 people in the European Union at any given time, with small and geographically widespread patient populations. Affecting these patient populations are the more than 9,000 diseases that have no approved treatment, which drives Every Cure’s goal to discover the full potential of the estimated 3,000 drugs currently on the market.

Every Cure was co-founded by David Fajgenbaum, Grant Mitchell, and Tracey Sikora in 2022. During Fajgenbaum’s third year of medical school, he became critically ill with Castleman disease and was hospitalized in critical condition for months. This experience launched his mission to find treatments to save his own life and others. Fajgenbaum’s team discovered an overactive pathway in his immune system and began testing a 25-year-old drug, which had never been used for Castleman disease, to block it. He has now been in remission for more than nine years.

“Despite tremendous advancements in health care and clinical research, only five percent of rare diseases have an FDA-approved medication,” said Derek Ansel, executive director, Therapeutic Strategy Lead, Rare Disease, at Worldwide. “Every Cure’s model is truly transformative and based on the concept that every drug on the market has multiple effects on the body – and cures can be found in unexpected places.”

Photo: David Fajgenbaum, Every Cure co-founder and director of the Center for Cytokine Storm Treatment & Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania.