Cures Within Reach Releases CureAccelerator™ v2.0

SKOKIE, Ill. - March 8, 2016 - PRLog -- Cures Within Reach (www.cureswithinreach.org), an organization working exclusively to catalyze repurposing research to quickly and affordably improve patient lives, has launched v2.0 of its CureAccelerator™ (www.cureaccelerator.org) platform. The world’s first online, interactive platform dedicated to exploring whether drugs, devices and nutriceuticals approved for one or more human diseases can be repurposed to create “new” treatments in other diseases, CureAccelerator was built with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and launched in May 2015.

“We are already seeing exciting repurposing research treatments move into clinical testing as a result of the collaboration among researchers, clinicians and funders on CureAccelerator,” said Dr. Bruce Bloom, President and Chief Science Officer at Cures Within Reach. “These new enhancements to the platform will make the collaboration experience even more powerful for users so that we can grow our active and global repurposing community.”

CureAccelerator v2.0 enhancements include improved navigation throughout the platform via a customized user dashboard that displays the funding amount, funding stage, project stage and remaining amount to be funded, with a link to a crowdfunding page for partially funded projects. An improved search function, ability to sort projects by funding status and other new functions also have been added.

To expand the repurposing research community beyond researchers, clinicians and philanthropic funders, a company representative user category has been added to support industry participation, both as funders and collaborators. Integrated scientific review will also be in this release, so that current users and non-users can be invited to become scientific reviewers for a specific proposal.

These new enhancements come on the heels of Cures Within Reach’s successful effort to secure 100 new repurposing research projects on CureAccelerator during the early part of 2016. Since the platform launched in May 2015, it has hosted more than 100 repurposing research projects from among 729 users. The recently secured projects were initiated from 52 research institutions in 7 countries. The projects proposed repurposed treatments for a wide variety of diseases, including 35 in oncology, 18 addressing neurology/neurodegenerative concerns and 19 in pediatric or rare diseases.

“As part of our effort to secure 100 new projects on CureAccelerator during the early part of 2016, we conducted site visits to research institutions across the country to learn about their efforts in repurposing research. We found that there is a great deal of excitement about repurposing as a way to treat diseases,” said Clare Thibodeaux, Director of Scientific Affairs at Cures Within Reach. “We hope our work and resources will help encourage researchers and clinicians and their institutions to bring even more energy and expertise to repurposing research.”

ABOUT CURES WITHIN REACH

Cures Within Reach (www.cureswithinreach.org) works to catalyze repurposing research to quickly and affordably improve patient lives. We accomplish this through collaborations that connect researchers and funding, by facilitating crowd sourcing and community, and by identifying alternative financing models and incentives.

Cures Within Reach’s repurposing research projects have generated 13 “new” treatments making an impact in the following diseases through off-label use in clinical practice or through a commercialization track: autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome, familial dysautonomia, Types 1 and 2 diabetes, lung cancer, multiple sclerosis, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma, prostate cancer, myelodysplastic syndrome and 4 additional pediatric auto-immune diseases.  Cures Within Reach has a portfolio of current projects poised to make an impact in, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, pediatric delirium, pediatric brain tumors, lung cancer, ascites, melanoma, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, prematurity, and polycystic kidney disease.

The organization built CureAccelerator (www.cureaccelerator.org) to provide a global collaboration space and market for repurposing research that can deliver effective solutions to unsolved diseases, to explore whether drugs, devices and nutriceuticals approved for one or more human diseases can be repurposed to create “new” treatments in other diseases.

Visit us at www.cureswithinreach.org or follow us via Twitter.com/CuresWReach, LinkedIn.com/company/cures-within-reach, YouTube.com/cureswithinreach or Facebook.com/CuresWithinReach