David Fajgenbaum, MD

We are thrilled to share that The @nytimes has just featured @EveryCure and our work using repurposed drugs to save lives. The article highlights how our AI-driven approach is identifying lifesaving treatments that were hiding in plain sight. It tells the powerful story of patient Joseph Coates, who at 37 years old was given just weeks to live due to a rare disease—until an AI-predicted treatment, helped save his life. This recognition is a testament to our mission: ensuring that every FDA-approved drug is fully utilized to treat every disease it possibly can. We are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to shed light on this critical work and the potential AI holds for revolutionizing medicine.  Click the link in our bio to read the full article! Photo credit: @hanloveyoon #EveryCure #DrugRepurposing #AIforGood #HealthcareInnovation #RareDisease #NYTimes

I’m so excited to share that I just crossed 10 years in remission! After nearly dying five times in three years and being told there were no more treatments for my disease, I never could have imagined ten years ago that I would be alive today. I could never have imagined that I would have married the love of my life, have two amazing children, and have been able to be a part of saving so many more patients lives with drugs that were literally sitting on the pharmacy shelf. For the next 10 years I’ll be on a mission to unlock as many uses of FDA approved drugs as possible to save as many lives as possible. I hope you’ll join us at @EveryCure to ensure that no patient is ever told ‘We’ve tried everything’ when there’s a life saving cure sitting on the pharmacy shelf. #scrublife #futuredoctor #doctorsofinstagram #medicaldoctor #doctorate #disease #raredisease #diseases #medicalfield #ibdwarrior #rarediseaseday #ChasingMyCure

I am so excited to announce that Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope Into Action will be available in paperback on Tuesday, January 26! I have loved hearing from readers around the world about what it's meant to them and how it has made a difference in their lives! And I’m also so proud that it has 5 stars on Amazon from over 250 reviews! If you haven’t read Chasing My Cure, I hope you will pre-order a paperback copy today, and let me know what you think! Link in bio to pre-order. #cmcpaperback #chasingmycure

We’re excited to share that one of Every Cure’s drug repurposing programs has reached a major milestone. In a recent publication with Luke Chen in the Journal of Haematology, we report that 10 patients with Rosai-Dorfman disease—a rare and potentially life-threatening hyperinflammatory condition—experienced substantial improvement when treated with lenalidomide/dexamethasone. This program was identified through our MATRIX platform, where it ranked highly as a promising repurposing opportunity. It’s a powerful example of what happens when you systematically search for new uses for existing medicines—and find treatments that can be moved forward quickly to help patients. Rosai-Dorfman disease is incredibly rare and often overlooked. But this is exactly what Every Cure is built for—taking medicines that already exist and applying them to diseases that have long been neglected. Because for patients with rare diseases, the goal isn’t someday. It’s as soon as possible.

Fourteen years ago today, this photo was taken while multiple chemotherapies were being infused into my port. A few weeks earlier, I had been told there was nothing more my doctors could do. My organs were failing from Castleman disease, a rare inflammatory disorder I had never even heard about in medical school. A priest had read me my last rites. My family said goodbye. But thanks to lots of chemotherapy, I survived. Just barely. And this photo was taken on the day I decided that I wasn’t just going to hope that some doctor somewhere would discover a treatment for me. I was going to fight back. At the time, I had no idea what that would eventually become. I didn’t know it would lead me to turning the microscope on myself, discovering a repurposed drug that would save my life, helping to find more repurposed treatments for many more patients, or eventually co-founding Every Cure to scale this work. I just knew that I wanted to live long enough to marry Caitlin one day and to discover treatments in memory of my mom and that I had been given another chance—and I wasn’t going to waste it. Looking back now, I don’t just see a guy doing what we now call a “Castleman Warrior Flex” in a hospital room. I see someone beginning to turn his hope into action and refusing to accept that “we’ve tried everything” and that there was “nothing else we could do.” And thankfully… he was right.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the incredible mom’s out there — especially @cpfajgenbaum ! You’re the best mom (and mascot-finder, soccer coach, class mom…) I could ever dream of for our little ones. Also sending happy Mother’s Day to my amazing sisters @genacombsg , @lisafajgenbaum , and mom-mom @pattypraz ! And thinking about my mom who hasn’t been with us for 22 years but I still think about every day.

Colon cancer is rising and it’s becoming one of the most deadly cancers in young people. Just last week, a friend I grew up with was diagnosed. We’re hopeful he’ll respond well to treatment. But moments like this are a reminder that there are treatments available today that many patients still don’t hear about. Some of these are repurposed medicines. Drugs like pembrolizumab, which helped a close friend during her battle with colon cancer, and even something as accessible as aspirin, which has been shown to reduce recurrence in certain patients with specific mutations. These are not future breakthroughs. They are treatments that can help patients right now. The challenge is awareness. At @EveryCure , this is exactly what we’re working to change—making sure that life-saving treatments don’t stay hidden in the data, but reach the patients who need them. Share this. Because awareness could help someone get access to a treatment that already exists.

After several bouts of illness and nearly dying, Dr. David Fajgenbaum learned that the treatment for his rare disease had been sitting on the shelf at his local pharmacy all along. Now he and his team at @everycure are using AI to search for thousands of other cures that may be hiding in plain sight. Tap the link in bio to read the full story, via @menshealthmag . Photos: Slide 1: Hannah Yoon/The New York Times/Redux; 3: Courtesy of David Fajgenbaum

Here are three steps you can take when a doctor says, “There are no more treatments” 1. Contact the disease organization. They may know of clinical trials or off-label treatments already being used for your condition. 2. Push for expert outreach. Ask your doctor to connect with specialists across the country who may have insights. If needed, travel to a center of excellence—it could save a life. 3. Explore AI-driven predictions. Tools like TXGNN, the Biomedical Data Translator, and Open Evidence are beginning to surface new treatment possibilities. These predictions must always be discussed with your doctor, but they can spark life-saving options. At Every Cure, we’re committed to ensuring that no potentially life-saving treatment is left on the shelf. Our AI technology scans across thousands of FDA-approved drugs and tens of thousands of diseases to uncover hidden treatment opportunities—especially for conditions that have been overlooked or underfunded. But AI predictions are just the beginning. Once our platform identifies a promising match, our medical and scientific teams step in to validate those findings through rigorous lab studies and clinical trials. We know that patients and their families can’t afford to wait. That’s why our goal is not just to generate ideas—but to translate them into real treatments that reach the people who need them most.

I’m so thrilled for my dear friend Wendy Finerman to see how well her newest film, Devil Wears Prada 2, has done this weekend! Congrats, Wendy! Wendy is such an incredible person, friend, and producer of so many great films like Forrest Gump, Devil Wears Prada, P.S. I Love You, and others, and it’s been so special to work with her to adapt my journey #ChasingMyCure into a film. I’ll never forget her reaching out to me for the first time after @nytimes ran “Doctor, Cure Thyself” and she traveled down to sit with me for an infusion the next week. Lots of work (and years) still to go but exciting progress underway. We loved being on set with Wendy to watch the filming of the opening scene of DWP2 which was on both her and Caitlin’s birthdays last summer!

After nearly dying, Dr. David Fajgenbaum learned that the treatment for his rare disease was sitting on the shelf at his local pharmacy. Now, he and his team at @everycure are using AI to search for thousands of other cures that may be hiding in plain sight. Read the full story at the link in bio. 📷 Hannah Yoon/The New York Times/Redux, Courtesy of David Fajgenbaum, MD

“I was 22 years old when my body started to feel like it wasn’t mine anymore. At first, it was small things. Walking up a flight of stairs felt harder than it should. My body started to swell. I remember standing there with my dad thinking, something’s not right—but I couldn’t explain it. Over the next few weeks, everything got worse. I kept going to appointments, getting tests, waiting for answers—but no one could tell me what was happening. It felt like my body was slipping, and no one knew how to stop it. Eventually, I got so sick that I ended up in the hospital. That’s when things got real. My mom lives over 20 hours away in New Brunswick. When she heard how bad things were, she dropped everything. Two ferry rides. A ten-hour drive. She just needed to get to me. I don’t remember much from that time. But she does. She remembers sleeping in hospital hallways. She remembers me being scared. She told me later that I asked her to sing to me—like she used to when I was a kid. While I was in the hospital, she was searching for answers nonstop. Reading everything she could. Trying to piece things together. That’s when she came across something called Castleman disease. Around that same time, my doctor—Dr. Steven Rowe—was starting to think the same thing. I was diagnosed with idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease with TAFRO syndrome. A rare and aggressive disease where your immune system turns on your own body. Once they figured it out, everything changed. I started treatment with siltuximab. Slowly, my body began to stabilize. Today, I’m still on treatment. I go in for infusions every six weeks. But I’m living my life again. What I don’t remember, my mom carries with her. And now she’s using it to help other families—working to make sure doctors can recognize this disease sooner, so someone else doesn’t have to go through what we did. This disease didn’t just change my life. It changed ours.” -Ian G.