CureScience CEO wants to ‘cocreate, not compete’ to advance health care

With a philosophy of “cocreate, not compete,” the Sorrento Valley-based nonprofit CureScience Institute is working to advance health care treatments that are more personalized to the patient.

CureScience started with a focus on brain cancer research. It is now supporting work to develop curative therapies for cancer, immune and neurological disorders, in addition to using regenerative medicine to cure many different types of human health issues.

CureScience CEO Shashaanka Ashili

(Courtesy)

“We expanded the mission and vision,” said Shashaanka Ashili, CureScience’s CEO. “Now we are looking to develop the framework where we can look into multiple disorders, multiple diseases.”

He said a key component of that goal is developing a more holistic approach to putting vast quantities of data to use.

“Google has some data, Apple has some data, Facebook has some data, some others have some data,” Ashili said. “Then you have the whole health care system which also has its own silos. Is it time to ask, can we put all these things together? And if so, how?”

He added, “The resounding answer to that is yes. That time was yesterday.”

The scope of CureScience’s work also includes COVID-19, which has killed more than 1 million people worldwide with vaccines still in development.

“By March it struck us all that nobody’s escaping COVID,” Ashili said. “It’s going to disrupt every business and it’s going to change everything.”

CureScience’s active mesenchymal stem cell research program could have implications for COVID-19 treatments, and could also yield insights into treating Alzheimer’s disease, which still has no effective treatments that can reverse symptoms.

Other unmet patient needs that CureScience would like to address include noninvasive ways to diagnose and monitor the treatment of brain tumors. The institute is also supporting immunotherapy, in which the body’s immune system can be better deployed to fight cancer. The institute is also working in many other areas to bring about more “patient-driven” ways to improve health care.

“In the next two years, we should have a framework where we can say this is what patient-driven health care looks like,” Ashili said, adding that the framework also has to showcase the value to patients.

“Once we have that, the sky is the limit,” he continued.

To help advance its work, CureScience is holding a virtual donor gala on Nov. 21. The event will feature an auction and guest speakers.

The institute is located at 10225 Barnes Canyon Road. For more information, visit curescience.org.