David Fagenbaum
speaker
271 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 28 Feb
David Fagenbaum’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
There was just one really big problem.
I didn't have 15 years and a billion dollars to develop a new drug from scratch.
But the good news is that those seven chemotherapies that had saved my life, they weren't made for my disease.
So I thought to myself, maybe there's another drug made for another disease that could also be repurposed for me.
This concept of repurposing isn't new.
You've probably all heard of Viagra before, right?
Well, you may know that Viagra was repurposed from heart disease to its well-known use.
But did you know it's also now utilized for a rare pediatric lung disease?
And thalidomide, which is known for causing horrible birth defects, is now utilized for leprosy and the cancer multiple myeloma.
Now, repurposing works because though diseases like leprosy and myeloma may appear very different, they can actually share the same underlying problems or mechanisms in the body and can therefore be treated with the same drug.
And amazingly, doctors can prescribe any FDA-approved drug for any disease where they believe the benefit outweighs the risk through something called off-label prescribing.
And off-label prescribing is actually very common.
In fact, one in four prescriptions written every single day in the US is off-label.
So I began to study my own blood in the lab to try to find a repurposed drug for me.
I discovered that a communication line to my immune system was turned into overdrive and that a decades-old transplant drug might be able to turn it off.
It had never been used before for my disease, but I was out of options, so I began to test it on myself.
In the three years before I started serolimus, I nearly died five times.
But since starting it, I've been in remission for over 11 years.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
Showing 161–180 of 271 · page 9 of 14
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