Overheard with Ajay Raju featuring Dr. David Fajgenbaum | Part 1

Philadelphia -- What if the cure for your disease was already sitting on a drugstore shelf? That's the audacious premise driving Dr. David Fajgenbaum, physician-scientist, Penn Medicine researcher, and co-founder of Every Cure, whose life story is as extraordinary as his science.

Fajgenbaum was diagnosed with Castleman disease in his mid-twenties, received last rites, and then did something remarkable: he helped find his own cure by repurposing a drug originally developed for organ transplant rejection. That experience launched a mission. Every Cure, the nonprofit he co-founded, is now using artificial intelligence to systematically match 4,000 existing drugs against 18,000 diseases, 75 million possible combinations, compressing decades of discovery into months.

In this conversation with host Ajay Raju, Fajgenbaum unpacks how Every Cure's AI platform works, why being a nonprofit gives the organization a strategic advantage in pursuing generic drugs that for-profit companies have no financial incentive to explore, and how the organization has already identified life-changing repurposed treatments, from an African sleeping sickness drug that helps bedridden children with a rare genetic syndrome, to lidocaine injections that reduce breast cancer metastasis.

The conversation turns deeply personal as Fajgenbaum reflects on what it means to live in "overtime," time he never expected to have, and why that clarity of purpose drives everything he does.

A Hollywood film about his life is in development, with producers behind Forrest Gump, The Devil Wears Prada, and The Blind Side.

Every Cure has raised $190 million and is just getting started.