Using Existing Drugs in New Ways to Treat & Cure Diseases of Brain & Body | Dr. David Fajgenbaum

This podcast recap is from a discussion with Dr. David Fajgenbaum, focusing on his personal near-death experience with the rare Castleman disease and his subsequent mission to repurpose existing FDA-approved drugs for new conditions. Dr. Fajgenbaum emphasizes that many effective treatments and potential cures already exist but are often unknown to doctors and the public due to systemic issues in how medications are patented, studied, and categorized, what he calls the "Santa Claus theory of civilization." He details his efforts, including starting the non-profit Every Cure, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) and rigorous research to systematically match the 4,000 existing drugs to the 18,000 known diseases, providing examples like the use of a gout drug for heart attack prevention and an African sleeping sickness medicine for a rare childhood syndrome. The conversation also explores the need for greater patient agency and centralized databases to make this critical, often life-saving, information accessible to all.