Worldwide Clinical Trials Partners with Every Cure to Accelerate Discovery of Treatments for Rare Disease Patients

CRO Supports Nonprofit’s Mission, Ensuring Approved Drugs are Fully Utilized for the 9,000+ Diseases without Approved Medications

Research Triangle Park, N.C. – 11 May 2023 – Worldwide Clinical Trials (Worldwide), the industry’s leading global, full-service contract research organization (CRO), has partnered with Every Cure, a nonprofit organization that unlocks new, often undiscovered uses for existing approved drugs by leveraging data, artificial intelligence (AI), and efficient clinical trials.

Through this new partnership, Worldwide will serve as Every Cure’s clinical trial and drug development partner. The CRO will use its clinical development and rare disease expertise to assist in identifying links between rare diseases and generic drugs on the market – all facilitated through the nonprofit’s comprehensive, open-source database of drug-repurposing opportunities. Once links and drug targets are identified and validated, Worldwide will run clinical trials for Every Cure with expedited timelines and a goal to unlock the full potential of existing medications to treat every disease possible and help rare disease patients around the world.

Every Cure is on a mission to alleviate suffering for the 300 million people globally who are battling diseases with no approved treatments. The nonprofit launched in 2022 in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative to scale up an innovative “drug-repurposing” approach to identify treatments for rare diseases – generally considered to be a disease that affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States or 5 in 10,000 people in the European Union at any given time, with small and geographically widespread patient populations. Affecting these patient populations are the more than 9,000 diseases that have no approved treatment, which drives Every Cure’s goal to discover the full potential of the estimated 3,000 drugs currently on the market.

“Our new partnership with Every Cure is anchored in our collective passion for accelerating rare disease research to help as many patients as possible, as quickly as possible,” said Dave Bowser, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Worldwide. “Every Cure’s method of mining medical records and real-world data to discover new uses for drugs that are already approved and available is commendable, and the Worldwide team is committed to helping scale these approaches to all drugs and all diseases.”

“We are so excited to be partnering with a like-minded patient-driven company such as Worldwide Clinical Trials,” said David Fajgenbaum, Every Cure co-founder and Director of the Center for Cytokine Storm Treatment & Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania. “The combination of Every Cure’s computational AI algorithm with Worldwide’s clinical trial expertise will have a substantial impact on finding and advancing cures for years to come.”

“Despite tremendous advancements in health care and clinical research, only five percent of rare diseases have an FDA-approved medication,” said Derek Ansel, Executive Director, Therapeutic Strategy Lead, Rare Disease, at Worldwide. “Every Cure’s model is truly transformative and based on the concept that every drug on the market has multiple effects on the body – and cures can be found in unexpected places. David and his team have been an inspiration to so many who live with rare diseases, and we are excited to kick off this partnership to help more patients around the world.”

Every Cure was co-founded by Dr. David Fajgenbaum, Dr. Grant Mitchell, and Tracey Sikora in 2022. During Dr. Fajgenbaum’s third year of medical school, he became critically ill with Castleman disease (CD) and was hospitalized in critical condition for months. This experience launched his mission to find treatments to save his own life and others. Dr. Fajgenbaum’s team discovered an overactive pathway in his immune system and began testing a 25-year-old drug, which had never been used for CD, to block it. He has now been in remission for more than nine years.

To learn more about Dr. Fajgenbaum’s journey and Every Cure’s mission, visit www.everycure.org.

To learn more about Worldwide’s commitment to excellence in rare disease clinical trial design, visit https://www.worldwide.com/expertise/rare-disease.

About Worldwide Clinical Trials

Worldwide Clinical Trials (Worldwide) is a leading full-service global contract research organization (CRO) that works in partnership with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to create customized solutions that advance new medications – from discovery to reality. Our capabilities include bioanalytical laboratory services, Phase I-IV clinical trials, and post-approval and real-world evidence studies – all powered by our accessible team of clinicians, scientists, and researchers who bring first-hand expertise and a collaborative, personalized approach to each clinical program.

Anchored in our company’s scientific heritage, we are therapeutically focused on cardiovascular, metabolic, neuroscience, oncology, and rare diseases. Our deep therapeutic knowledge enables us to develop flexible plans and quickly solve problems for our customers.

Our team of 3,000+ professionals spans 60+ countries, and believes that through a culture that embraces diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B), everyone plays a vital role in making a world of difference for patients and their caregivers. We are united in cause with our customers to improve the lives of patients through new, innovative therapies.

For more information on Worldwide, visit www.Worldwide.com or connect with us on LinkedIn.

About Every Cure

Every Cure is a nonprofit organization dedicated to unlocking the full potential of every existing medicine to treat every disease possible. Repurposing existing drugs is the fastest and most efficient way to treat diseases with the greatest return on investment for saving lives. However, systemic barriers impede repurposing, so patients suffer while potential treatments are not fully utilized. Every Cure overcomes these barriers to systematically identify and advance promising repurposing opportunities and save lives. Every Cure is taking a revolutionary and disruptive approach to overcome these systemic barriers by developing a comprehensive, open-source data engine to generate predictive efficacy scores for all 3,000 drugs against all 12,000 diseases and rapidly advance treatments to patients. In partnership with academia, industry, and government, Every Cure is integrating proprietary and public data into a comprehensive dataset, optimizing AI ranking algorithms, validating the most promising drug-disease matches, performing trials, and ensuring patient access to effective therapies.

For more information, please visit EveryCure.org or connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.