When her stepdad is diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, Barbara Goodman realizes her life’s work might be exactly what he needs.
Barbara Goodman leads Cures Within Reach and its mission to drive more treatments to more patients more quickly through repurposing research. She joined in 2017 to help expand the reach and influence of CWR in both the philanthropic and commercial spaces, as well as to foster organizational growth and financial sustainability. Barbara is helping the organization develop new partnerships and expand current relationships with donors, sponsors, partners, industry, government, Board members and other volunteer leaders, to further our mission. Barbara has nearly 25 years of international business and healthcare / biomedical / life sciences sector business experience, focused on planning and implementation of strategic growth initiatives at both for-profit and not-for-profit corporations. She joined CWR after leading iBIO Institute’s PROPEL Center for nearly 10 years, where she led programs to increase the number and success rate of early-stage life sciences companies in Illinois, and supported iBIO’s international activities. Barbara previously worked in corporate strategy and business development at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (now the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab), Cardinal Health Medical Products & Services Division, and Chesapeake Corporation. Barbara earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from the University of Minnesota and a Master’s of Business Administration from Thunderbird School of Global Management.
TRANSCRIPT
I was already in college when my stepdad Tom met my mom in 1990. My older sister had already finished college. He was in his late 40s and never had kids of his own. For this bachelor, meeting the right woman whose kids were already out of the house was a win. He didn't have to raise us but he got all the benefits, including becoming a grandfather.
After they got married in 1992, Tom quickly treated my sister and I as his own. Over the years with my various career moves in different cities, he always cared about how I was doing professionally more from the side of making sure I enjoyed the work than anything else. As my career in healthcare at for‑profit companies to the now 18 years working at healthcare nonprofits focusing on growth and impact.
In 2006, I spent two weeks in Vietnam with my stepdad, a Vietnam veteran. He shared a side of him that few had seen. In the 1960s, he spent most of his 12 months in Vietnam on the top of a mountain outside of Dalat serving the US in communications. We hiked that mountain together in 2006, 40 years after he was there.
The US Army base is now a Vietnam National Park and he proudly showed me and our Vietnamese guide the concrete slabs that were once the mess, the communications tower and the bunks. This trip created an unspoken bond between us. I got to travel across Vietnam while hearing a Vietnam veteran’s memories as he retraced his steps in the South and as we both went to North Vietnam for the first time.
Then in 2019, Tom was diagnosed with polycythemia vera, a type of blood cancer within a category called myeloproliferative neoplasms or MPNs. When they shared the news with me, my Mom and Tom were still trying to get their arms around what it meant, what the treatment options were, what the prognosis was, you name it.
And the universe works in mysterious ways. Imagine their surprise when I could immediately pronounce and spell these diseases. Then I shared a story, filmed just months earlier by Chicago's ABC news that featured me and the organization that I lead today, Cures Within Reach. The news story was about a young Chicago woman diagnosed with PV, polycythemia vera, who is able to have a child due to the success of a repurposed drug.
Suddenly, my professional role merged with my personal life. I lead Cures Within Reach, a nonprofit that leverages the speed, safety and cost‑effectiveness of testing already‑approved therapies for unsolved diseases. We are both disease and geography agnostic, which is very broad, yet we are narrowly focused on finding and funding Proof of Concept Phase 1 and Phase 2A clinical trials to de‑risk and catalyze follow‑on funding in in order to deliver treatments to patients in the near term. We measure our success by the funds we helped to leverage. For example, in 2023, our funded researchers raised over $16 million in follow‑on funding for their trials.
So, how did Cures Within Reach impact my stepdad's treatment? I was able to share information about clinical trials and blood cancers, how to gain knowledge from the many blood cancer patient organizations and what future therapy options were being developed.
Then in 2020, the winner of Our Rare Disease clinical trial pitch event was coincidentally in MPNs. The winning trial is testing a drug already approved to treat acetaminophen overdose to address the major clinical issues of MPNs and potentially prevent progression to other cancers.
I shared the public information with Tom about this trial who proudly printed it off and brought it to his doctor and asked the doctor what he thought. The doctor said, “Well, that's interesting, but I can't recommend that you take this since we don't yet know if it really works,” which is exactly what Cures Within Reach focuses our efforts on. We fund the early‑stage trial necessary to build the data package required for either FDA approval or for off‑label use when a doctor prescribes a drug for a purpose other than its approved use.
One of Cures Within Reach's earliest successes and often considered the grandfather of medical repurposing is in blood cancer. In 2002, our parent organization funded Mayo Clinic's early clinical research on thalidomide for multiple myeloma. This was approved by the FDA in 2006 followed by the approval of a related drug, lenalidomide.
Cures Within Reach customizes our approach to bringing new treatment options to patients. The easiest way to explain our work is through the children's game many of us played when we were young called Mad Libs. You fill in the blank with a noun or a color or an adjective that you pick. Well, Cures Within Reach works with our donors in their own specific interests. One family may be interested in a neurodegenerative disease, a corporate foundation is interested in rare diseases, a private foundation is interested in LMICs or low‑ and middle‑income countries, a family foundation in pediatrics.
What many Americans also don't realize is that 25% of prescriptions in the US and up to 50% of cancer drugs are prescribed off‑label, not yet approved by the FDA. But how does this work?
Doctors read about these not‑yet‑approved uses in scientific journals, peer‑reviewed publications or hear about them at conferences where the latest treatment options are shared. But what are they reading about or hearing about to get comfortable to use these therapies off‑label? It's the clinical data from randomized control trials.
Without this clinical data, my stepdad's doctor wasn't going to prescribe anything to help, just like most doctors are hesitant. My stepdad's doctor wanted to see the clinical data from a Phase 2 or Phase 3 trial before prescribing this drug to my stepdad, and I understood completely a doctor's hesitancy to prescribe a treatment for a patient before seeing clear, clinical evidence that it works.
To truly reach patients everywhere, this clinical evidence is critical for doctors based anywhere.
Cures Within Reach focuses exclusively on funding the trials that spark or catalyze the follow‑on trials and the follow‑on funding from the NIH, from industry and others. This is our favorite way we measure our success, what really pushes the snowball down the hill.
My stepdad's convergence with my professional career didn't end there. In late 2020, after a few successful trials in mental health, Cures Within Reach launched our initiative to increase treatment options for veterans, including PTSD, depression and traumatic brain injury. And who was so very excited about this new initiative? My stepdad, the proud veteran who continued to serve in the US Army Active Duty Reserve, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.
Although Tom passed away due to complications from blood cancer in 2022, I know that he would be so proud of the work that I'm doing to help bring more treatment options to patients in the fastest way possible using already‑approved treatments.
As for myself, while I am not discovering a blockbuster drug or treating patients myself, it is so personally and professionally fulfilling to help de‑risk and catalyze these already safe and effective therapies impacting patients one unsolved disease at a time.
Thank you.