Eye Hope Foundation

Autumn update 2020

Dear Friends,

 

Hopefully you are doing fine and taking care of your closest during this health crisis.

As foundation founders, it’s easy to be frustrated over many things. We collect far too little money, we can fund only a limited number of projects, the foundation work comes on top of all daily issues with our children, researchers are years away from a solution etc. etc.

However, we have the duty to our children and families to look at it from another angle.  There are plenty of positives as well, but only if you actively pursue them.

During the past half year, we launched our call for research projects and received more than ten well described proposals.  Several of them made a lot of sense and we wish that we could fund all of them.

In the selection of the projects we focused on three things:

Realism
Timeframe towards patients
Experience in the field
Animal model

After careful consideration, we selected the project of Dr. M. Plaas, Estonia to be funded. The project will run for two years and focus on novel treatments based on gene therapy and novel molecules. We had an excellent collaboration during the past couple of years and we are looking forward to continuing that. Their rats are in our opinion the most reliable animal model available within the wolfram research environment. If co-funding by other patient groups allows, we might evaluate to co-fund other projects as well over the next couple of months.

Therefore, we reach out to other foundations to approach us. Together, we are stronger!

To summarise, we are proud of several things.

Proud of the Eye Hope Foundation for allowing us to search for research projects. Since our start we have been the driving force for Wolfram Syndrome research around the world.

Proud of the three Eye Hope families and many Eye Hope supporters for collecting funding for our organisation. They are unique within the Wolfram field!

Proud of the progress in research during the last years and the perseverance of our researchers.

On a personal note, I am proud of the positivism of my son, his sisters and my wife! They help me through our daily issues and that’s only possible with their positive attitude!

Eye hope we will find good treatment alternatives.

Take care and stay safe,

On behalf of Eye Hope Foundation,

Lode Carnel

 

Read more...