Medable, a clinical trial software company, is partnering with the recently formed nonprofit Every Cure to support research in repurposing existing drugs to treat rare diseases.
Every Cure launched in September as part of a partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative to scale up “drug re-purposing” research that would identify treatments for rare diseases.
The group was co-founded by David Fajgenbaum, M.D., who was diagnosed with Castleman disease in 2010 while he was in medical school. The disorder involves benign tumors that form in lymph node tissue. Fajgenbaum identified an existing drug, sirolimus, that could be repurposed to treat Castleman.
The mission of the nonprofit is to uncover uses for existing drugs and conduct clinical trials of the most promising treatments to evaluate their effectiveness for FDA-approval and/or off-label clinical use, Medable and Every Cure said in a Jan. 4 press release.
As part of the partnership, Medable will provide specialized software and services to conduct global, remote clinical trials for drug repurposing candidates.
“We live in an era of exponential improvements in medicine, but traditional clinical trials are a bottleneck in the system—and only yield 50 new FDA-approved treatments per year,” Michelle Longmire, M.D., Medable’s co-founder and chief executive, said in the release. “With new technologies and new research techniques, we believe it’s possible to drastically increase the number of therapies in development—and Every Cure will be an important leader in driving that change.”
Medable recently re-upped its partnership with CRO Syneos Health to boost decentralized clinical trials and improve patient diversity. In the almost year and a half the two companies have been working together, they have collaborated on more than 15 clinical trials that span multiple therapeutic areas.