Dr. Scott Weir Named Research Recipient of 2018 Global Health Repurposing Awards

CHICAGO - Feb. 27, 2018 - PRLog -- Cures Within Reach, a leading global nonprofit focused on repurposing research as a fast track to impacting patients' lives, today announced that Scott Weir, PharmD, PhD, of The University of Kansas Cancer Center, is the recipient of the 2018 Janet Davison Rowley Patient Impact Research Award. Cures Within Reach selected Dr. Weir for his work in advancing 12 repurposed drugs for cancer patients into clinical trials, as the co-inventor of a repurposed antifungal therapy to treat bladder cancer and as an acknowledged thought leader in the repurposing field. Repurposing research clinically tests approved drugs, devices and nutraceuticals to find new treatments for unsolved diseases.

Cures Within Reach will honor Dr. Weir and two other honorees for their outstanding achievements in creating impact for cancer patients by repurposing existing science and medicine at its 6th Annual Global Health Repurposing Awards (GHRA) on June 26, 2018 at City Winery in Chicago.

"Dr. Scott Weir has created a culture highly supportive of repurposing at The University of Kansas Cancer Center (http://www.kucancercenter.org)," said Clare Thibodeaux, PhD, Director of Scientific Affairs at Cures Within Reach (http://www.cureswithinreach.org). "He is dedicated to creating repurposing collaborations among various stakeholders, including industry, academia, government and philanthropy, all to bring treatments to cancer patients in need."


Upon learning of his award, Dr. Weir commented, "Finding new uses for FDA-approved and abandoned drugs is an integral part of our strategy to discover and develop new cancer treatments.  We systematically test FDA-approved drugs and abandoned drugs for activity against newly discovered cancer pathways to create opportunities to rapidly advance new cancer treatments to our patients, to identify opportunities to enhance tumor response and overcome resistance to standard-of-care agents, and to assist in validating cancer drug targets in support of our efforts to discover new anticancer agents."

The 2018 GHRA event will honor leaders in industry, science and philanthropy who have made a patient impact through cancer-related repurposing. Cures Within Reach pointed to the ongoing demand worldwide for additional therapies to combat cancer for its decision to highlight the work of this year's honorees.

The Janet Davison Rowley Patient Impact Research Award recognizes researchers and clinicians who have successfully repurposed a drug, device or nutraceutical for human clinical use, published their repurposed treatment results in the clinical or scientific literature and provided patients with increased quality of life through the repurposed treatment developed. The award is named in recognition of the impact that Dr. Janet Davison Rowley (1925-2013) had on patients through her clinical care and medical research, and because her pioneering discoveries showing genetic alterations create diseases are the foundation of many repurposing opportunities.

For more information about attending the 2018 GHRA to hear inspiring stories, honor all awardees and support the Cures Within Reach mission, visit cureswithinreach.org/ghra-2018.

About Cures Within Reach

Cures Within Reach (CWR) is a US-based global philanthropic leader that improves patient quality and length of life by leveraging the speed, safety and cost-effectiveness of medical repurposing research, driving more treatments to more patients more quickly. CWR catalyzes research to facilitate and validate repurposing opportunities that create clinical impact, and enables and facilitates conversation and action among stakeholders that help transform healthcare through repurposing opportunities. Through repurposing, CWR drives both market impact and health savings to patients and patient groups, from academia / researchers, with payers and the healthcare industry and with support from the government, philanthropy and others. CWR'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.

CWR currently has a global portfolio of 20 repurposing research projects either funded or approved for funding, as well as over 180 repurposing research projects available for funding in a wide range of diseases on CureAccelerator.org. Visit us at cureswithinreach.org or follow us via Twitter @CuresWReach, LinkedIn (LinkedIn.com/company/cures-within-reach), YouTube (YouTube.com/cureswithinreach) or Facebook (Facebook.com/CuresWithinReach).

About CureAccelerator®

Cures Within Reach built CureAccelerator (app.cureaccelerator.org/home) to provide a global collaboration space and marketplace for repurposing research that can deliver effective solutions to unsolved diseases. CureAccelerator was built with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to provide a platform in which drugs, devices and nutraceuticals approved for one or more human diseases can be repurposed to create "new" treatments in other diseases. CureAccelerator has over 1,600 users who have proposed 180 projects, of which more than 20 have received funding and are moving towards patient impact.

About Dr. Weir

Scott J. Weir, Pharm.D. Ph.D. is Director, Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation (IAMI), University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC). He also serves as the Associate Director for Translational Research for The University of Kansas Cancer Center. Dr. Weir holds academic appointments as Professor in the Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutics and the Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology at KUMC. He is the Kelly Family Foundation IAMI Professor in Cancer Drug Discovery and Development. Over the past seven years, along with its partners, IAMI has advanced 18 new cancer treatments to patients, 12 of which employed drug-repurposing strategies. Dr. Weir is co-inventor of Ciclopirox Prodrug, a drug treatment for bladder cancer that has advanced to a first-in-human clinical trial.

Dr. Weir serves on scientific and external advisory boards for the Myeloproliferative Neoplasm Research Foundation, Center for Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Kentucky and Center for Drug Discovery at Washington University.  He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Leo and Anne Albert Institute for Bladder Cancer Care and Research.