In the global race to find effective treatments for COVID-19, Doctor Evidence (DRE) is collaborating with David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc, co-founder of The Castleman Disease Collaborative Network (CDCN), and an assistant professor of Translational Medicine & Human Genetics and director of the Center for Cytokine Storm Treatment & Laboratory at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, to help provide essential information for researchers and physicians by maintaining a central repository of current COVID-19 treatments.
DRE’s DOC Search platform, now listed as a COVID-19 external search platform by the World Health Organization, and its Natural Language Processing technology are aiding in identifying, prioritizing and analyzing published literature regarding COVID-19. The artificial intelligence driven software helps the team to more rapidly scan the universe of published literature and determine which papers are relevant for inclusion in the CORONA project. The researchers are using the metadata in the platforms to annotate drugs for addition to their comprehensive information repository. DRE technologies will support Dr. Fajgenbaum as the volume of COVID-19 related literature grows exponentially.
“Dr. Fajgenbaum’s personal experience and his work on cytokine storm diseases make him uniquely qualified to lead this initiative,” said DRE CEO Bob Battista. “He and his team are providing a tremendous service to the global medical and scientific communities, and DRE is pleased to play a role.”
At CDCN, Fajgenbaum works with a volunteer army to identify and analyze data for use in and in the search for drug repurposing candidates to treat COVID-19. He first began conducting this kind of research after being diagnosed with idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease (iMCD) as a third-year medical student. iMCD is a poorly understood and deadly inflammatory condition with limited treatment options. Fajgenbaum and his CDCN colleagues performed a series of experiments and data analyses that led to the discovery of a treatment that had never been used for iMCD. Fajgenbaum began testing it on himself and has now been in remission for over 6 and a half years.
“As we continue to see the devastating impact of COVID-19, we remain committed to rapidly identifying the best treatments, and technologies like these are providing critical support for our work,” Fajgenbaum said.
About DRE:
DRE is a market leading company in the AI-enabled health technology marketplace that deploys state-of-the-art solutions to identify, synthesize, and analyze complex clinical data into actionable insights. DRE provides instant, continuous search and data analysis across critical functions of Pharmaceutical, Biotech, Life Sciences and Medical Technology companies to optimize their clinical programs. Its technology platform provides DRE’s customers with a Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) Insights Engine which empowers them to make better decisions from lab to patient.
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