By Allison Proffitt

December 3, 2015 | For severely ill children with a rare disease called autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome (ALPS), dead white blood cells build up in the organs instead of being broken down normally. But two pills a day of a drug approved for use after kidney transplants gives some total remission of their disease.

A laser developed to treat epilepsy can be trained on a cancerous prostate, killing the cancerous cells but not damaging the surrounding nerves, the bowel, or other critical structures.

These are repositioning success stories, instances in which drugs and devices originally approved for one indication have proven life-changing for patients with a different disease. But many times, it’s hard to connect the ideas and funding to support the research and trials needed for drug or device repurposing.  

“Our job has always been to bring those parties together and help make a good match,” explained Bruce Bloom, President and Chief Science Officer at Cures Within Reach.  

Last month, Cures Within Reach announced a new initiative encouraging researchers and clinicians to post 100 new repurposing projects within 100 days to CureAccelerator, the online matchmaking tool it launched in June, “to prove to the world that developing repurposed treatments is a critical piece of the healthcare puzzle.”

Cures Within Reach doesn’t directly fund repurposing research, but instead plays a facilitator role in connecting and distributing funding to researchers with projects in mind. The organization was formally founded in 2005, a non-profit that grew out of the work previously funded by a family charity. Since 2001, Cures Within Reach had been working on drug repurposing, but in 2009 decided to drop other research efforts and focus exclusively on drug repurposing, Bloom said.

The group has relationships with more than 35 research institutions and a host of nonprofit funding organizations, some of which fund research related to specific diseases while others offer funds regardless of therapeutic area.

Academic labs and clinicians who are doing proof-of-concept clinical trials are the most frequent posters to CureAccelerator. As part of the 100 Projects initiative, Cures Within Reach hopes to raise awareness about the vast opportunities available in drug repurposing by collecting many ideas by February 15, 2016.

“By posting repurposing projects, researchers and clinicians can show funders what’s possible, highlight their institutions expertise, and be the first to know about repurposing funding announcements released in 2016,” said Bloom in the announcement.

Cures Within Reach distributes funds for approved projects by giving 80% of the requested funds to the researchers, and keeping 20% of each project’s budget to pay for CureAccelerator overhead. On the research side, the institution is generally more than happy to take on 20% of their project’s budget, Bloom says.

Under this model, CureAccelerator can be self-sustaining. Cures Within Reach can focus on curating proposals, distributing grants, advocating for drug repurposing, building sustainable economic models for drug repurposing research, and finding repurposing opportunities earlier.

Cures Within Reach is actively involved in all of the projects it funds, Bloom says. Any disease area that is “unsolved” is eligible, diseases with no therapies or diseases for which medications can be ineffective or come with unwanted side effects. The Cures Within Reach science advisory board reviews every project along with the help of three objective subject matter experts included with the proposals. A research roadmap is developed for each approved project with quarterly aims and goals, and funding is distributed on this quarterly schedule.

Repurposing of proprietary drugs generally happens within pharmaceutical companies, so the proposals that Cures Within Reach receives are mostly for work with off-patent medications, but that’s not to say that pharma isn’t involved in the process. Bloom says Cures Within Reach is designing versions of the Cure Accelerator platform specifically for a few pharma partners who want to be able to send out requests to the Cures Within Reach researcher network for feedback and ideas on both stalled and proprietary compounds. In those cases, pharma may pay Cures Within Reach for the platform and the leads it generates.

The big question remains, how many repurposing success stories actually exist?

“Our estimation is that there are literally thousands of opportunities to repurpose drugs either alone or in combination with other drugs,” Bloom said. “We’re going to see how quickly we amass a bulk of projects… If 25 research institutions are able to generate 100 projects in three months, imagine if we really put a lot of money and effort into this how many opportunities would be out there.”