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Scott Johnson |
June 1, 2007
It has been a rapid-fire few months for us at MRF. Since I last wrote in March, we have been on the road with science updates for current and potential supporters in Chicago, St. Louis, Montreal, West Hartford, New York City, San Diego and Boston. I am pleased to report that the interest in our model continues to grow.
As we approach the end of our third year of research, the scientific team continues to make great progress. At our annual research review meeting in Palo Alto last month, the scientists discussed with our Scientific Advisory Board a set of more than 30 experiments. We were gratified by the Board’s assistance and for their endorsement of the Year Four proposed experiments. What this means is that the Scientific Advisory Board members, senior scientists from some of the world’s most respected universities, believe that the research being conducted in our funded labs remains on track with respect to the overall research plan.
In addition to continuing our efforts at identifying novel therapeutic targets, we are undertaking a new effort to establish a strategy for rapidly validating one or more of the promising discoveries made in our funded labs. Validating the discoveries to meet the needs of pharmaceutical companies will be the next critical step to achieve our goal of licensing a drug target for further drug development and ultimately clinical trials.
In three years, we have raised $16 million - almost 65% of the dollars necessary to achieve our goal of licensing our first myelin repair drug target by July 2009. To those among you who have supported us, thank you.
While of necessity, we have focused our efforts on a relatively small number of individuals and foundations capable of making large donations, smaller donations are also very important to us. In fact, with the help of matching employer gifts, many “small” donations have become two-times and in some cases as much as five-times the original gift. Please continue to give and to help us connect with others who can as well.
Though we anticipate that our first phase of research will be completed within the original five-year timeline, our work will not be done. I look forward to updating you soon on the new elements of the ARC model that will allow us to accelerate the validation process and more rapidly move our discoveries toward patient treatments.
Sincerely,
Scott Johnson
President and Founder
