Friday, April 24, 2009

Unforgettable Fund Thanked and Thanked Again

And even more news on the research front - Remember last year when we learned that our first intern, Marie Neant-Fery, in Dr. Malcolm Leissring's lab was first author on a distinguished Alzheimer's paper? Well, it's happened again, this time with our second intern Christelle Cabrol, who also was first author on an important paper just published in PLoSOne .

And if that isn't awesome enough, there is this second to last paragraph in Science Daily that should make everyone who donated to The Unforgettable Fund stand up and take a bow. Applause. Applause.

Apparently, we're mentioned - for the second time in a published paper - as funders of this important research. And I quote from the paper itself:

"Funding: Supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (AG030718 and DA024888 to MAL and AG012749 to DJS and MAL) and by a generous donation from The Unforgettable Fund (to MAL and CC). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

More applause! More applause! But really, the woman I would like to thank is Marcia Nappi.

Last year, Marcia Nappi donated $5,000 to The Unforgettable Fund to be used specifically for Malcolm Leissring's research. She had met Malcolm at an event being held by the Alzheimer's Association. She was so captivated by his avenue of research, his passion for the subject and his relentless drive, she wanted to in some way help his investigations into Alzheimer's disease. She did just that with her well-applied generosity.

By funding interns in Malcolm's lab at Mayo Jacksonville, The Unforgettable Fund accomplishes three things:
1) We spread knowledge at the most affordable level
2) We free up a lead investigator's time to accomplish more
3) We directly impact the amount of research being done in an Alzheimer's lab.

This summer, The Unforgettable Fund will be funding two more interns at Mayo Jacksonville - Sabrine Hedouin and Ana Vaquer-Alicea - both from the University of Paris. We have no way of guaranteeing they will publish their findings as our first two interns have, but that seems to be the high bar their predecessors have set.

If you are interested in helping with this effort, and want your donations to go directly to scientists doing Alzheimer's research, please visit The Unforgettable Fund and donate! You'll be taking a bow before you know it!

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