Finalists Announced for CureAccelerator Live! for Chicago 2020 Competition
illi News/10073822

CHICAGO - illiNews -- Cures Within Reach, a leading global nonprofit focused on repurposing research as a fast track to impacting patients, is holding CureAccelerator Live! for Chicago, its unique philanthropic pitch competition, virtually on September 15, 2020 at 5pm CT.

Researchers and clinicians from 4 institutions across Chicago will present their clinical repurposing research projects to community members representing pharma, biotech, academia, medicine, philanthropy and patient groups. The winning project will be selected by attendees to receive up to $50,000 in funding.

The 4 finalists invited to present their clinical trial projects are:
- Sadiya Khan, MD from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine presenting "Combining 3 generic diuretic drugs for heart failure patients"
- Richard Lieber, PhD from Shirley Ryan AbilityLab presenting "Repurposing a blood cancer treatment to treat muscle contractures in cerebral palsy patients"
- André Lindsey, PhD from Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital presenting "Using EEG as a tool to better assess recovery following brain injury"
- Margaret Liotta, DO from Loyola University Medical Center presenting "Repurposing a blood pressure drug for the treatment of recurrent chemo resistant ovarian cancer"

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"Patients with unmet medical needs are always searching for new and better therapies, much like COVID-19 patients in the current pandemic," said Clare Thibodeaux, PhD, Director of Scientific Affairs at Cures Within Reach. "The repurposing clinical trials featured at CureAccelerator Live! for Chicago may provide critical proof-of-concept data to catalyze the additional funding and research needed to impact these patients, while leveraging repurposing's speed and cost-effectiveness."

"Supporting innovation is fundamental to building a robust biomedical sector here in Chicago," said Karie Thomson, Searle Consultant to The Chicago Community Trust. "The projects developed by each of the four finalists are indicative of the wealth of talent here. Cures Within Reach is a pivotal partner in fostering such talent, which can lead both to breakthroughs in longstanding health challenges or new threats like COVID-19 and to long-term economic impact for our region."

Funding for the winning project is supported by the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust; additional event support from the members of Cures Within Reach's Chicago Repurposing Community, including Brand Institute, Fujifilm Pharmaceuticals, Horizon Therapeutics, PhRMA, Recordati Rare Diseases, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, TerSera Therapeutics and the Walder Foundation.

Registration for CureAccelerator Live! for Chicago will open in August.  For more information, agenda and registration, visit: bit.ly/cwrcalchicago20.

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The CureAccelerator Live! for Chicago event will be 7^th time that Cures Within Reach is holding this philanthropic pitch competition.  Past event themes include Rare Diseases, Oncology, the Mid-Atlantic and the Developing World.  Information on the previous winning clinical repurposing projects are at: https://www.cureswithinreach.org/research/current-research.

About Cures Within Reach
Cures Within Reach (www.cureswithinreach.org) is a US-based 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. 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.

In 2019 alone, CWR began 6 new clinical repurposing research projects.  CWR currently has a global portfolio of 20 repurposing research projects at 17 institutions in 15 diseases. Follow CWR via Twitter @CuresWReach, LinkedIn (LinkedIn.com/company/cures-within-reach), YouTube (YouTube.com/cureswithinreach) or Facebook (Facebook.com/CuresWithinReach).