About David
From nearly dying to saving lives—Dr. David Fajgenbaum is rewriting the rules of medicine with relentless hope, bold science, and the drive to cure the incurable.
Beating the Odds: A Race to Cure His Own Disease
David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc, is Co-Founder & President of Every Cure as well as a groundbreaking physician-scientist, disease hunter, speaker, and national bestselling author of Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope Into Action.
Scaling Hope: Repurposing Drugs to Save Millions
Best known as the ‘doctor who cured himself’ (Doctor Cure Thyself, NY Times), Fajgenbaum went from being a beast-like college Quarterback to receiving his last rites while in medical school and nearly dying four more times battling Castleman disease. To try to save his own life, he spearheaded an innovative approach to research through the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network (CDCN) and discovered a treatment that is saving his life and others.
Every Cure
Now, he is spreading this approach to other diseases (His method could save millions, CNN) and co-founded Every Cure in 2022 to unlock the full potential of every drug to treat every disease possible. He has advanced 14 repurposed treatments for diseases they weren’t initially intended for. Fajgenbaum also continues to share lessons he learned about life, hope, and resilience from nearly dying through his national bestseller, Chasing My Cure, which has been profiled by Good Morning America, CNN, NPR’s Fresh Air, and BBC News, among others, translated into over five languages, and named one of the “Best Non-Fiction Books.”
Survivor. Physician-Scientist. Speaker. Bestselling Author.
One of the youngest faculty members to ever receive tenure at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and one of the youngest awardees of multiple leading NIH and FDA grants, Dr. Fajgenbaum has authored over 100 scientific papers in leading journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. He has been been profiled in two front page stories by The New York Times (in 2017 and 2025) as well as by Good Morning America, CNN, and the Today Show and has received numerous honors, including the 2016 Atlas Award alongside then Vice President Joe Biden, 2022 NDRI Service to Science Award alongside Nobel Laureates Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, 2023 Philadelphia Citizen of the Year Award, and selection to the 2025 TIME100 Health list of the world’s most influential people in health. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA.
Prior to founding the CDCN, CSTL, and Every Cure, Dr. Fajgenbaum co-founded and led the Actively Moving Forward Support Network, a nonprofit college student grief support network that reached thousands of students in memory of his mother. Dr. Fajgenbaum earned a BS from Georgetown University, MSc from the University of Oxford, MD from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and MBA from The Wharton School.