Turning personal crisis into public breakthrough.
Dr. David Fajgenbaum
CO-FOUNDER & PRESIDENT, EVERY CURE
WORLD-RENOWNED PHYSICIAN-SCIENTIST
TED SPEAKER
SPEAKING FEE: $30,000 - $40,000
Meet David
Kown as “The Doctor Who Cured Himself,” discovering and repurposing a treatment to save his own life
His nonprofit uses AI and data science to find new uses for existing, approved medicines
One of the youngest faculty members to receive tenure at the University of Pennsylvania
David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc, is Co-Founder and President of Every Cure and a physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania where he is one of the youngest faculty members to receive tenure at Penn Medicine. He is also battling a deadly disease as a patient and alive thanks to a repurposed treatment he discovered and described in his national bestselling memoir Chasing My Cure. He has advanced 13 more repurposed treatments for cancers and rare diseases and co-founded Every Cure to unlock more hidden cures, which has received over $100M from ARPA-H and TED’s Audacious Project.
One of the youngest ever awardees of multiple top NIH and FDA grants, Dr. Fajgenbaum has published over 100 scientific papers in leading journals, such as The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the Journal of Clinical Investigation. He has been profiled by The New York Times, Good Morning America, TODAY, and Forbes 30 Under 30 and awarded the 2016 Atlas Award along with then VP Biden, 2022 NDRI Service to Science Award alongside Nobel Laureates Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, 2023 Philadelphia Citizen of the Year award, and named to 2025 TIME100 Health as one of the 100 most influential people in health worldwide.
Dr. Fajgenbaum earned a BS from Georgetown University, MSc from the University of Oxford, MD from the University of Pennsylvania, and MBA from The Wharton School. During college, David was a Division I quarterback and founded and led a national grief support network during college and graduate school.
SPEAKING TOPICS
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David shares his remarkable journey from patient to pioneering physician-researcher to nonprofit founder. Audiences will learn how to channel adversity into action, pursue bold solutions hiding in plain sight, and mobilize hope to drive change for others.
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Billions of dollars are spent developing new drugs — yet many life-saving cures may already exist in medicines we already have. David unpacks the untapped potential of drug repurposing, how AI can revolutionize this process, and what this means for patients and the future of healthcare innovation.
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Whether working with scientists, policymakers, investors, or patient advocates, David has built cross-sector collaborations that turn big visions into measurable impact. He shares lessons on leadership, forging unlikely partnerships, and scaling solutions in complex ecosystems.
