“Mission: Cure” Launched to Harness Innovative Financing and Impact Investing to Cure Disease; Pioneers New Approach by Attacking Pancreatic Disease

New York, New York, Tuesday, November 7, 2017—The new nonprofit Mission: Cure will convene the world’s leading pancreatic experts at the American Pancreatic Association meeting in San Diego on November 10^th to devise a 10-year plan to cure chronic pancreatitis, a painful and costly pancreatic disease, using an innovative financing model that could be applied to cure other diseases.

Building on the global movement toward outcome-based financing, Mission: Cure will partner with healthcare payers and philanthropists to provide financial incentives for improving patient outcomes.  Mission: Cure will work with researchers, clinicians, patients, providers, industry, and entrepreneurs to achieve those outcomes.

The strategies will include using advanced genetic testing and data aggregation tools (precision medicine), working with scientists and the FDA to efficiently move promising therapies into clinical trials, and repurposing drugs approved for other diseases. “Repurposing already-approved drugs is a faster and less expensive way to get new treatments to patients. Cures Within Reach has facilitated numerous successful repurposing efforts and will help Mission: Cure deploy this strategy as its fiscal sponsor,” said Cures Within Reach CEO Dr. Bruce Bloom.

Joe Titlebaum, Chair of the National Pancreas Foundation, said, “Mission: Cure’s groundbreaking approach is at the cutting edge of efforts to cure disease. The more than one million people suffering from chronic pancreatitis globally will benefit from their focused effort to bring new therapies to people in need.”

Mission: Cure will work with the growing group of impact investors who want their investments to produce social benefits in addition to financial return to create a new type of health investment where investors can make a quantifiable impact on people’s health while potentially receiving a return from patient outcome payments and the market.