Dr. David Fajgenbaum, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania and five-time survivor of a disease similar to COVID-19, joined Eyewitness News to discuss how repurposed drugs may provide the crucial part of finding a cure of the virus.
Watch the video above for the full interview.
You wrote a book about your work in finding a cure for Castleman disease, which involved a repurposed drug. What did you learn from that and how did you get involved in studying COVID-19?
"I decided to dedicate my life to trying to study and identify a treatment, maybe a cure, for my disease. After years, I found a drug that had been approved and available for 30 years, that no one had ever tried for my disease and I started testing it on myself. Today marked over six years that I've been in remission on this drug... So when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, I immediately thought of all the similarities between COVID-19 and the Castleman disease, the disease that I struggle with. I thought about our efforts to identify and repurpose drugs and I decided that I wanted to refocus my lab on searching for an existing drug, something that's already out there that can be tried against COVID-19."
We've already heard about a few existing drugs that may be used as coronavirus treatments. What have you been seeing?
"We found over 150 different drugs have already been given to humans with COVID-19 so lots of drugs are being tried, many of those drugs have only been tried in a small number of patients. But the good news is that there are drugs being attempted to be used against COVID-19 and there are a few... these are drugs that actually are developed for Castleman disease that are showing a lot of promise right now. So we're really hopeful that just because we've only heard about a few, there are actually many more that may have real important effects."