The Shawn Ryan Show
#240 Dr. David Fajgenbaum - Can AI Find Cures to Rare Diseases Using Existing Medicine?
29 Sep 2025
Full Episode
Dr. David Fagenbaum. John, thanks for having me. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Hey, my pleasure. So, wow. You've had quite the journey with health. And... You made some amazing discoveries and I don't know a whole lot about it, but we're going to dive into all that. But thank you for coming. I'm really excited about this.
And, you know, one of my biggest fears, probably my biggest fear is terminal illness. And we started diving into health stuff last year, you know, primarily about all the stuff you were hearing on the news about COVID.
red dyes and all the shit that's in foods and the water and just everything and it really got my my uh my attention and so um i've been looking for somebody you know on on the subject of cancer and you're like right there so this is this is something i've been a subject i've been wanting to dive into for a long time so i just really appreciate your time and coming here
i'm so happy to be here and looking forward to this conversation cool well everybody starts off with an introduction here nice david fagenbaum trailblazing physician scientist and tenured professor at university of pennsylvania's perilman school of medicine channeled your expertise in immunology and drug repurposing to tackle some of the world's most elusive diseases
Founder of the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network to accelerate breakthroughs for rare hyperinflammatory disorder that nearly claimed your life five times. Co-founder of EveryCure, an innovative nonprofit harnessing AI to repurpose existing drugs and unearth hidden treatments for untreatable conditions.
Best-selling author of Chasing My Cure that chronicles your journey and is now being turned into a film. A TED speaker whose 2025 talk, How Nearly Dying Helped Me Discover My Own Cure, and many more, has ignited a movement to change medicine. A husband, a father, and now living over a decade in remission from Castleman's. And you have a great quote that I just wanted to share.
The greatest cures often hide in drugs we already have. It's up to us to find them.
That's right.
Love that quote. Love that quote. So I want to do... A bit of a personal story on you, kind of a life story on how this all happened. I know you were a hell of a collegiate athlete when you got diagnosed, correct? And so we'll start there and then go through all your research, how you cured yourself and all that good stuff. But first, we've got a couple of things to knock out. Sounds good.
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