We are elated to announce that Healx, an AI-powered technology company that shares our passion for patient-centered care, has chosen to team up with Mission: Cure to help find a cure for chronic pancreatitis! Mission: Cure was chosen from among many rare disease organizations to be part of Healx’s Rare Treatment Accelerator Program (RTA) with the aim of starting a clinical trial and eventually develop a treatment for pancreatitis.

Launched in October 2019, Healx’s Rare Treatment Accelerator program uses artificial intelligence, drug development, and clinical trial expertise to evaluate, enhance, and accelerate repurposed drugs to treat rare diseases. Healx will devote significant financial resources to the effort, with the aim of starting a clinical trial for a chronic pancreatitis therapy within 12 months. Mission: Cure will provide insights into patient needs and connections to pancreatitis experts.

This innovative partnership will bring chronic pancreatitis patients closer to a treatment for this terrible disease. We are excited to move the needle forward for pancreatitis patients with the help of Healx.

About Healx

Healx Team

Healx was founded in 2014 in Cambridge, UK, by Dr Tim Guilliams, a Biochemical Engineer and Tech Entrepreneur, and Dr David Brown, co-inventor of Viagra and former Global Head of Drug Discovery at Roche.

Healx is an AI-powered, patient-inspired technology company, accelerating the discovery and development of rare disease treatments at scale. There are 7,000 known rare diseases that affect 400 million people across the globe but only 5% of those conditions have approved treatments. Healx’s mission is to identify and progress novel therapies for the 95% of rare diseases without approved treatment. To do this, Healx combines AI technology with drug discovery expertise and patient insight to identify existing drugs that may be repurposed and combined to treat rare diseases.

About Mission: Cure

Mission: Cure is a nonprofit organization that aims to dramatically improve the health and well-being of people suffering from chronic and recurrent acute pancreatitis within 10 years, demonstrating a new model for curing disease. Mission: Cure partners with patients and their families, researchers, clinicians, pharmaceutical companies, and other stakeholders to discover life-altering therapies—including repurposed drugs—and bring them to patients. To support efficient therapy development and more effective care pathways, Mission: Cure works with health systems and payers to pilot innovative funding models that incentivize patient outcomes.

Mission: Cure was established in 2017 to improve patient outcomes, find effective treatments and, ultimately, a cure for pancreatitis. Over the last three years, patients have consistently shared their dismal experience and the financial toll of navigating the medical system in search of a diagnosis and/or a treatment plan while suffering with pain, hopelessness, and poor outcomes.

We are conducting an anonymous online survey to better understand the financial challenges and barriers that patients face when seeking care for chronic and recurrent acute pancreatitis. We believe that your input will help us  to identify educational resources related to financial advocacy and financial literacy that patients may find helpful in navigating these experiences.

At the end of the online survey, you will see an invitation to schedule an optional one-on-one conversation to go deeper on some of the questions included in the survey. To schedule this conversation, you will be asked to provide your name and contact information so that a Mission: Cure team member can follow up with you. 

If you are willing to share your experiences with us, please complete this survey by Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email us at mystory@mission-cure.org.