Surprising Repurposing of an Asthma Drug

Feb 28

Last year, Sanath started a huge undertaking to sift through more than 4000 existing drugs to find any that might help Raghav. This high-throughput screen looked at all sorts of medications with the hope that one or more would show unexpected activity in Raghav’s very cells.

And they found one.

It was an approved and marketed drug, which meant it was possible to obtain.

But you cannot just go grab prescription only drugs from your corner pharmacy for anything you want. The drug is designed to treat the inflammation associated with asthma – not exactly Raghav’s situation. And in this case, Raghav could not take the tablet form or the dose that is generally available – additional specialized pharmacy work had to be done. All of this is costly, and they were not sure if insurance would pay any part of the bill.

In this episode we talk about how Sanath and Ramya approached each of these hurdles.

Salem Oaks uses riverside.fm to create Raising Rare.