Cures Within Reach Young Professionals Board Welcomes 2017 Elected Chairs and New Members

SKOKIE, Ill. - Aug. 7, 2017 - PRLog -- Cures Within Reach, the leading global nonprofit focused on repurposing research as a fast track to saving patient lives, recently welcomed a new slate of committee chairs and members to its Young Professionals Board. Since 2014, the Young Professionals Board (YPB) has worked with Cures Within Reach to expand and enhance its mission of driving more treatments to more patients more quickly through repurposing.

The YPB is a diverse team of young professionals from a variety of industries, including healthcare, business, law, and philanthropy. In 2016, the YPB launched CureAccelerator Live!, a philanthropic pitch event to support innovative research. This successful event raised funds for a clinical trial investigating a repurposed treatment for chronic limb ischemia, currently underway at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The YPB is currently planning the 2017 CureAccelerator Live! event, and also hosts several networking and fundraising events throughout the year.

"The YPB formed from a small group of young, motivated, passionate volunteers who wanted to actively do more to spread awareness of Cures Within Reach's mission," said Susan Braze, YPB Secretary and Administrative Manager at Cures Within Reach.  "In a short period of time, the YPB has already made an impact on patient lives by founding the CureAccelerator Live! event. We're grateful for the YPB's energy and continued dedication to getting treatments to patients in need through repurposing research."

The YPB is proud to announce the following newly elected committee chairs:

·       Melvin McElrath, Pfizer – Executive Vice Chair

·       Kimberly Woods, University of Chicago – Membership Committee Chair

·       Yanran He, University of Chicago – Media/Communications Chair

"We are thrilled to have Melvin, Kim, and Yanran in these chair positions," said YPB Executive Chair Helen Ji.  "They have each shown great commitment to repurposing medical treatments and bring strong leadership skills to the team.  We look forward to an exciting year ahead for the YPB and Cures Within Reach."

The full list of YPB chairs include:

·       Helen Ji, Schiff Hardin – Executive Chair

·       Melvin McElrath, Pfizer – Executive Vice Chair

·       Susan Braze, Cures Within Reach – Secretary

·       Kimberly Woods, University of Chicago – Membership Committee Chair

·       Yanran He, University of Chicago – Media/Communications Committee Chair

·       Tyler Wanke, Innoblative Designs – Fundraising Committee Chair

The Cures Within Reach YPB is open to all professionals age 35 and under who are interested in medical repurposing. To learn more, visit http://www.cureswithinreach.org/about-us/boards/young-pro... or contact Helen Ji at cwrypb@gmail.com.

ABOUT CURES WITHIN REACH

Cures Within Reach works to catalyze repurposing research to quickly and affordably improve patient lives. We accomplish this by connecting funders with researchers to jumpstart repurposing research clinical trials, by providing collaboration tools so repurposing stakeholders can work together more easily, and by pioneering alternative finance engines and incentives for repurposing research. Cures Within Reach's repurposing research projects have generated over a dozen "new" treatments making patient impact through off-label use in clinical practice or through a commercialization track. Cures Within Reach currently has 24 repurposing research projects either funded or approved for funding.

ABOUT CUREACCELERATOR™

Cures Within Reach built CureAccelerator to provide a globalcollaboration space and marketplace for repurposing research that can deliver effective solutions to unsolved diseases. The CureAccelerator platform was built with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to provide a platform in which drugs, devices and nutriceuticals approved for one or more human diseases can be repurposed to create "new" treatments in other diseases. CureAccelerator has over 1,000 users who have proposed 120 projects, of which more than 20 have received funding and are moving towards patient impact.

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