Cures Within Reach Announces Finalists for CureAccelerator Live! on November 15

SKOKIE, Ill. - Oct. 25, 2017 - PRLog -- Cures Within Reach, a leading global nonprofit focused on repurposing research as a fast track to saving patient lives, and its Young Professionals Board, will host CureAccelerator Live!, a unique philanthropic pitch event on November 15, 2017 at MATTER in Chicago. Researchers and clinicians from five academic centers across the country will present their repurposing research clinical trial ideas in five different cancer types in front of an audience of stakeholders from pharma, biotech, academia, medicine, philanthropy and patient groups. One project will be selected by attendees to receive up to $50,000 in grant funding at the end of the evening.

This year, the projects pitched at CureAccelerator Live! will focus on repurposing to treat cancer. A highly competitive Request For Proposals process resulted in applications from top research institutions in the U.S., Canada and Israel. The five finalists invited to present their clinical trial projects are:

• Dr. Chris Lominska, MD, University of Kansas Medical Center: "Combining the Rheumatoid Arthritis Agent Auranofin with Radiation Therapy to Improve Outcomes in Patients with Rectal Cancer"

• Dr. Michael Spiotto, MD, PhD, University of Chicago: "Feasibility of Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs to Enhance Radiotherapy of Head and Neck Cancers"

• Dr. Paul Swiecicki, MD, University of Michigan: "Old Drugs As New Therapies For Metastatic Thyroid Cancer"

• Dr. Bakhos Tannous, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University: "Human Clinical Trial to Evaluate a Novel Combination of Drugs to Dramatically Increase Glioblastoma Survival Rates"

• Dr. Stephen Wong, PhD, Houston Methodist Research Institute: "Repurposed Cardiac Glycosides to Treat Children with Central Nervous System Tumors"

"The goal of CureAccelerator Live! is to raise awareness and funds for innovative repurposing research clinical trials," said Clare Thibodeaux, PhD, Director of Scientific Affairs at Cures Within Reach. "Repurposing is an important pathway to driving treatments to patients, especially in cancer care. The clinical trials showcased at CureAccelerator Live! have the potential to quickly make a positive patient impact through repurposing."

The inaugural CureAccelerator Live! event was held in 2016. Last year's winning research team is conducting a clinical trial at the University of Illinois at Chicago, combining an approved medical device with a generic drug to repair vascular damage caused by chronic limb ischemia. The research team has completed patient enrollment, and preliminary results from the clinical trial are expected in mid-2018. Chicago ABC 7 Eyewitness News anchor Judy Hsu reported on the clinical impact of this research: http://abc7chicago.com/health/medical-treatment-repurpose...

"The Young Professionals Board is proud to work with Cures Within Reach on this exciting event," said Helen Ji, Executive Chair of the Young Professionals Board and Associate at the law firm Schiff Hardin. "We look forward to giving the audience the opportunity to engage with and learn from these impressive researchers and clinicians, and to help choose the winning project."

CureAccelerator Live! 2017 sponsors (as of October 23) include: Horizon Pharma, PwC, Takeda Pharmaceuticals (Cures Within Reach Leading Sponsors); Grund & Leavitt, IBM, the Judy Hirsch Foundation, Medmarc (Go the Distance Sponsors); Seyfarth Shaw (Find a Cure Sponsors); Baxter Credit Union, Brown Rudnick, HUB, Innoblative, Proven Process Medical Devices, Silicon Valley Bank (Walk the Cause Sponsors); Briteseed, Bryan Cave (additional sponsors).

Early bird tickets for CureAccelerator Live! are available until October 31, 2017. Visit cureswithinreach.org/ca-live2017 for tickets and more information about the event.

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 global collaboration 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 1,400 users who have proposed 150 projects, of which more than 20 have received funding and are moving towards patient impact.

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