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This is so exciting!! My contribution will be very small, but it will be in the mail!! Carolyn

Dear Friend,

The Michael J. Fox Foundation needs your help. We have an opportunity to raise $1 million for research on CERE-120, an innovative new treatment for Parkinson’s disease with potential to do what no currently available treatment can: slow or stop the progression of the disease. The research will investigate gene therapy delivery of neurturin, a trophic factor that spurs the production of dopamine in the brain.

Daniel Spitzer, MD, a member of MJFF’s Board of Directors, and his family are so excited about Ceregene’s Phase 2 trial of the treatment that they have agreed to contribute as much as $500,000 to support the trial. However, their generous gift has been conditioned on MJFF raising an additional $500,000 as a match.

Click here to make a tax-deductible donation that will immediately be doubled in size by the Spitzer Family Challenge.

Ceregene, a San Diego-based biotechnology company, completed its CERE-120 Phase 1 safety trial (partially supported by a Foundation grant) in 2007. Not only did CERE-120 prove safe, it showed potential to slow or even stop the progression of Parkinson’s disease.

The next step was to move forward with a Phase 2 trial in a larger patient population to determine the effectiveness of the treatment. The multi-center trial of CERE-120, sponsored by Ceregene and partly supported by MJFF, is considered by many Parkinson’s researchers to be the field’s most exciting development in years — and potentially closer to patient impact than any other novel PD treatment currently in development. (Click here to read more.)

Together we can meet this new and exciting challenge. Thanks to this wonderful opportunity being provided by the Spitzer family, your tax-deductible gift of $50 immediately becomes $100 to support this important clinical trial. A gift of $500 immediately becomes $1,000.

Please click here to donate to the Spitzer Family Challenge right now.

If you have any questions, you can reach me directly at lfleisch@michaeljfox.org.

Sincerely,
Leslie Fleisch
Associate Director, Annual Giving

I wish they accepted PayPal!

Time to organize business angles?.....should be interesting and hopefully successful. Once again, if the patient isn't in the formula, good luck.

It's up to us - we can't afford to wait for our doctors to go first. Carolyn, asking your opinion here and hope I don't put you on the hot spot' Some data to go with that release would truly show good faith; what do you think? or did I miss it?

paula

Paula, if you are asking about Phase II results, that won't be available until late this year. The trial will complete about September (12 months after the last surgery,) then the data will go to the analyst.

So it is just a waiting game, but MJFF is excited...or so it seems.

All I can do it be hopeful, for myself and everyone else, especially those yet to be diagnosed.

I meant wouldn't it have been helpful for the team to give us some information to go on. In the light of so many treatment halts and med unapprovals, i'm not sure i would send money to this without more specifics.

i wasn't in any way trying to say you shouldn't be hopeful about the results; we all have hopes for this treatment. I would probably help fund it; but want to know more specifics.

hope that was clearer,
paula

I have never understood why results of a trial have to be secret until the great unveiling at the end.

Still this excitement is catching, GO CERE.

Neil.