Today’s guest is Dr. David Fajgenbaum, survivor, scientist, physician, and disease hunter. 

Dr. Fajgenbaum is a world-renowned physician-scientist, bestselling author, inspirational speaker, and survivor on a mission to save lives by using AI and relentless hope to unlock hidden cures.

At 25 years old, Dr. David Fajgenbaum was told he had hours to live.

A rare immune disorder called Idiopathic Multicentric Castleman Disease was shutting down his organs. He received last rites. He said goodbye to his family. And then — against all odds — he survived.

Not once. Five times.

With no effective treatments available, he turned my desperation into determination— As both patient and scientist, David made a radical decision: if no cure existed, he would chase one himself—even if it meant experimenting on his own body.  What followed wasn’t just recovery. It was transformation.

In this episode of Alive Again, David recounts what it feels like to grieve everyone you love all at once — to prepare for death while still conscious. He describes the strange emotional flip from despair to overwhelming gratitude when the chemotherapy began to work. And he shares the moment everything changed: when the world’s leading experts told him there were no more options.

So he decided to become his own.

Drawing on his training as a physician-scientist, David began studying his own blood, searching for a clue. What he found was hiding in plain sight — a decades-old transplant drug sitting on pharmacy shelves that had never been tried for his disease. That drug, an mTOR inhibitor called sirolimus, put him into remission and has kept him alive for over a decade.

But the story doesn’t end with survival.

David went on to help launch the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network and later co-founded Every Cure, a bold initiative using artificial intelligence to systematically match existing drugs to diseases they were never intended to treat. His mission: to find cures hiding in plain sight — not just for himself, but for anyone running out of time.

This is a conversation about urgency, agency, grief, and gratitude. About what happens when hope turns into action. And about how living in “overtime” can clarify what truly matters.

For more information on Dr. Fajgenbaum and his work and writing, visit his website. For more about his book got to Chasing My Cure, and click here for more about  Every Cure 

Story Producer: Dan Bush

If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story! Please email us at [email protected] We’d love to hear your story! 

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