Cures Within Reach Launches New Impact Awards Program to Support Repurposing Startups — Cures Within Reach

CHICAGO – July 30, 2018 – PRLog — Cures Within Reach, a leading global nonprofit organization focused on repurposing research as a fast track to impacting patients’ lives, today announced the launch of its Impact Awards. The new program provides funding to address the unique challenges faced by repurposing startups, beginning with a geographic focus in the greater Chicago area.

Unlike its other funding mechanisms for researchers at academic institutions, the Impact Awards are intended for startups that have identified repurposing-specific commercial opportunities. Funds must be earmarked for clearly defined projects that could result in high-impact, value-enhancing R&D and/or business milestones. Another distinguishing criterion is the startup provides a minimum of a 100% cash match of the amount awarded through the Impact Award program. Application is by invitation only from Cures Within Reach.

“We developed the Impact Awards to better serve as a value-creating catalyst and facilitator, ultimately driving more treatments to more patients more quickly,” said Cures Within Reach President and COO Barbara Goodman. “Our team recognizes that a repurposing startup could be just a single milestone away from moving toward attracting a significant infusion of capital or achieving commercial success. We are eager to help de-risk repurposing startups.”

Inaugural Impact Award Presented to Chicago Startup ResQ Pharma

Cures Within Reach selected ResQ Pharma, Inc., to receive its first Impact Award – a $50,000 award for the company to conduct a two-part safety study. ResQ is a biopharmaceutical company focused on ensuring reliable global access to LipidRescue™ Therapy (LRT), a life-saving treatment used to reverse various non-opioid drug overdoses, including local anesthetic systemic toxicity (LAST) through the administration of an intravenous lipid emulsion. By repurposing a lipid emulsion nutritional supplement as an antidote for drug overdoses, LRT has the potential to impact more than 400,000 lives annually in the U.S. alone.

During pre-NDA (New Drug Application) discussions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the agency advised ResQ of the need for non-clinical (animal) data to further validate the safety profile of its project. Cures Within Reach’s Impact Award supports ResQ’s work with the CorDynamics Toxicology Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago to conduct the two-part study.

“Based on the growing interest in non-opioid drug overdoses, our team, including the inventor, Guy Weinberg, MD, decided to launch LRT with an improved formulation instead of the version currently used off label by clinicians,” said ResQ CEO Paul Burton, JD, MBA. “We made the strategic decision to launch LRT as a treatment for non-opioid drug overdoses, while continuing to support clinicians’ needs to treat LAST. This safety study is the last step prior to filing our NDA in December for the LAST indication, and supporting supplemental NDA submissions for expanded indications as early as next year.”

Burton said the company anticipates receiving FDA approval for the LAST indication in mid-2019, adding words of appreciation for the support of repurposing startups through the Impact Awards. “We are thrilled that Cures Within Reach recognizes the work that we are doing can quickly impact patients, and are excited about its support for companies like ours,” Paul said. “It is sometimes difficult to get investors to pay attention to repurposing in general, and supporting incremental improvements in science is even more challenging. We believe that our two-phase safety study will generate data that will lead to the commercialization of our life-saving LRT product.”

About Cures Within Reach

Cures Within Reach (CWR) is a US-based global 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, and enables and facilitates conversation and action among stakeholders that help transform healthcare through repurposing opportunities. 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. CWR’s repurposing research projects have generated over a dozen “new” treatments making patient impact through off-label use in clinical practice or through a commercialization track.

CWR currently has a global portfolio of 20 repurposing research projects, either funded or approved for funding, as well as more than 180 repurposing research projects available for funding in a wide range of diseases on its CureAccelerator^® site. Visit cureswithinreach.org (http://www.cureswithinreach.org) or follow CWR via Twitter @CuresWReach, LinkedIn (LinkedIn.com/company/cures-within-reach), YouTube (YouTube.com/cureswithinreach) or Facebook (Facebook.com/CuresWithinReach).

About ResQ Pharma

ResQ Pharma, Inc., is a biopharmaceutical company created by Guy Weinberg, MD to ensure reliable, global access to LRT as a treatment for various lipophilic drug overdoses and poisonings. It is already the opinion of the American Heart Association and American College of Medical Toxicology that where there is serious hemodynamic instability from local anesthetic drugs with high lipid solubility, LRT is a reasonable consideration for therapy, even if the patient is not in cardiac arrest. It is a member of iBIO’s PROPEL, EnterpriseWorks Chicago, The BUNKER and MATTER, and is also a Qualified New Business Venture for the Illinois Investment Tax Credit Program. For more information, please visit www.ResQPharma.com.