The illustration on our cover is specifically intended as a graphic representation of the promise behind an alumni-led nonprofit called Every Cure, which seeks to harness the power of artificial intelligence to sift through myriad data points with the goal of repurposing existing drugs to combat rare diseases for which no cure or treatment has been found—or, often, even been sought, given the relatively small populations affected and limited expectations of profit involved for pharmaceutical companies.
David Fajgenbaum M’13 WG’15 told the dramatic tale of his own desperate search for a cure for the rare disease that first struck him when he was in medical school in the memoir Chasing My Cure. In “Chasing Every Cure,” frequent contributor JoAnn Greco traces how the experience also inspired Fajgenbaum to dedicate himself to broadening the search for unsuspected treatments by cofounding Every Cure with friend and classmate Grant Mitchell M’14 WG’14.
Its approach is based on a well-known phenomenon in which drugs approved or developed for one purpose turn out to be effective for another—drugs for erectile disfunction and weight loss, originally designed to lower blood pressure and control diabetes, respectively, being familiar examples. What’s new is the data-crunching ability of AI to identify and begin to rank those potential drug-disease connections—out of about 75 million possibilities, Mitchell told JoAnn—which can then be pursued for further study and shared among researchers and health professionals. As one doctor who JoAnn spoke to put it, “What Every Cure does is make a big tent for the thousands of rare diseases out there.”
Of course, our cover also echoes the universal symbol for recycling and its associated mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle. But that promise, to judge from Alexander Clapp C’13’s new book Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash, is largely a hollow one.
For “Travels in Trashland” senior editor Trey Popp interviewed Clapp about his international investigation of the shadowy network that transports the developed world’s waste for a profit and offloads it to areas less fortunate—and what that means for the people in those places and the rest of us. Also included is an excerpt from Clapp’s book, in which he describes a visit to a notorious dumping ground for the world’s smartphones, computers, and other electronics equipment in Ghana.
Also in this issue, the recent real-life drama around the election of a new pope gave a renewed burst of attention to a fictional version—Conclave, produced by Michael Jackman C’85—but the film had already enjoyed critical acclaim, a healthy box office, and a clutch of award nominations, including for Best Picture at the Oscars. Though that was not to be, freelancer Susan Karlin C’85 describes Jackman’s thrilling ride on the awards season roller coaster, along with the story of his steady by comparison ascent through the Hollywood hierarchy (as suggested by the title, “The Producer as Problem Solver”).
Finally, see our annual Alumni Weekend photo gallery and coverage of Commencement, where speaker Elizabeth Banks C’96 gave a funny and relevant talk rooted in her own Penn experience (including learning to make choices like an adult and being hungover at her previous big moment on Franklin Field).
—John Prendergast C’80
Editor
