We cordially invite you to join us for our 2018 Party for a Cure, an L.A.-based gala held at the LUXE Sunset Boulevard Hotel on Friday, October 5, 2018. We are partnering with the National Pancreas Foundation to host a night of generosity and fun to help us achieve our goal of finding a cure. During this black-tie event, we will be honoring the patients and families dealing with pancreatic disease alongside the physicians and scientists whose work bring us closer to feasible treatments for these debilitating diseases.
Party for a Cure will help propel Mission: Cure‘s work in the upcoming years. Here, our mission focuses on advancing medical research and development of treatments for pancreatitis. In our first year as an organization, we have had our eyes set many innovative and exciting projects that we have begun to and hope to continue pushing forward in the very near future. However, doing so will not be possible without your support as a community of patients, caregivers, physicians, and researchers. For this reason, we hope that you will join us for an elegant evening of music, food and auctions to raise funds in support of the children and adults suffering from pancreatic diseases.
Tickets are now available for purchase at http://bit.ly/LAgala2018. If you are unable to attend but would like to support Mission: Cure, one-time gifts can also be made through the link above. For more information about the event or on how to be involved with our work driving pancreatic medical discovery and measurably impacting patients’ lives, please email info@mission-cure.org.
In addition, premier giving levels and sponsorship packages are available for recognition in conjunction with the event. More information on these packages is available here, and we urge any interested parties to reach out to our co-directors, Linda Martin at lmartin@mission-cure.org or Megan Golden at mgolden@mission-cure.org.
Mission: Cure believes that new innovations in medical research are key to achieving our goal of curing chronic pancreatitis. For this reason, we strive to leverage and support advances in genomics and precision medicine and aim to collaborate with forward-thinking and mission-driven organizations. Today, we are excited to announce our partnership with Perlara, a rare disease drug discovery platform company working with highly motivated families, foundations and drug developers. Together, we have formed a n=1 drug discovery PerlQuest pact with the goal of discovering promising compounds for rapid testing in patient-matched organoid models of pancreatitis to get treatments to patients faster.
In Stage One of the PerlQuest, Perlara will engineer ∆F508 and 26 other CFTR disease-causing variants in yeast YOR1 models of CFTR deficiency with Mission: Cure’s support. The project will then involve completing drug repurposing and drug discovery screens with the ∆F508 model and another mutant, e.g., class III or class IV.
In the words of Perlara founder and CEO Ethan Perlstein, PhD., we look forward to scientific firsts for rare disease drug discovery.
For more information, check out Perlara’s recent press release on the exciting project: https://prn.to/2L7FTfC
To register and see more information regarding the session on chronic pain, please visit: https://bit.ly/2HkylYZ.
On the day of the meeting, registered patients will be able to access the webcast here.
Get your voice heard: If you are unable to making the public meeting, you can still contribute through written comments on the Federal Register Notice for this meeting that will have a public docket open until September 10th, 2018.
Learn more about Patient-Focused Drug Development: This meeting on chronic pain is the 26th disease-area meeting led by the FDA as an important part of its Patient-Focused Drug Development Initiative.
Mission: Cure aims to demonstrate a new model for curing disease, leveraging outcome-based financing and impact investing. Our first mission is to find a cure for CHRONIC PANCREATITIS, a painful and disabling disease that affects 150,000 people, including 10,000 children. Our goal is to accelerate the development of promising new treatments and find a cure. But we can’t do it alone.
Pancreatitis in the news
Yes, you read that right! The popular Swedish DJ Avicii died at age 28 in late April after suffering from pancreatitis for several years. All of the major news outlets covered it and “pancreatitis” trended on social media. Unfortunately, some reports made inaccurate statements that pancreatitis is usually caused by alcohol. These generalizations are harmful to patients. Mission: Cure is committed to educating patients, the medical community and others about the latest science and ending the stigma and denial of care that can result from misinformation.
Calling all people living with pancreatitis! Mission: Cure is launching a new awareness and education program. With support from the AbbVie Foundation and in partnership with the National Pancreas Foundation, we will hold a series of webinars where pancreatitis experts will share the latest research and answer patients’ and caregivers’ questions. Also, our blog is coming soon plus we regularly share news and updates on social media. Connect with us!
Our ambitions are BIG but we need your help! We are developing a patient survey to understand patients’ needs, preferences and priorities. Our goal is to help the FDA and other government agencies, medical researchers and healthcare professionals focus on what is important to those affected by pancreatitis. Watch for the survey this Fall. To increase our impact, we urge everyone to participate. Please spread the word to all patients and family members!
An effective treatment for pancreatitis may already be in your drug store… We have identified 36 approved drugs that scientists believe could treat chronic pancreatitis. These include some statins, rapamycin and drugs approved to treat cystic fibrosis. Since these drugs have already been approved for human use, clinical trials can happen quicker and much less expensively than new drugs. We are working with leading scientists and Cures Within Reach to design efficient clinical trials to test the most promising of these drugs. Stay tuned!
Pursuing a “Social Impact Bond” in England The innovative financing model Mission: Cure is planning originated in the United Kingdom in 2010. Called a Social Impact Bond (or SIB, even though it was not really a bond), the first of these was used to fund programs to prevent crime and recidivism. In 2016, Cures Within Reach began exploring whether a SIB could fund repurposing of generic drugs to cure rare diseases in England, with funding from Big Lottery and support from the National Health Service. Cures Within Reach and Mission: Cure are now working with a pro bono social innovation team at Medidata to apply this financing to curing pancreatitis in the UK.
The Nonprofit Finance Fund, which maintains a website for people interested in innovative financing, recently published a blog by co-founder Megan Golden on Mission: Cure’s model. You can read it here: http://www.payforsuccess.org/blog/outcome-based-financing-cure-disease
The Mission: Cure team is growing! Linda Martin joins Mission: Cure as co-director.
Before joining Mission: Cure, I spent over 30 years as a serial entrepreneur, launching and growing companies in the fast-paced mobile telecom industry. It was a challenging and rewarding career and I relish the many friendships that I made. However, my life instantly changed when my daughter was diagnosed with Chronic Pancreatitis. After months of research, I learned that little is understood about this disease and existing treatments are ineffective. I was frustrated but committed to changing the status quo and finding effective treatments for my daughter and everyone living with pancreatitis.
As co-director of Mission: Cure and the mother of a CP patient, I’m obsessed with the urgency to develop improved therapies and find a cure. There is much to do to accelerate research and drug discovery for those living with CP. Together we can raise awareness, drive new discoveries and impact lives. I hope you’ll join us!
Mission: Cure is grateful for the support of the National Pancreas Foundation, Cures Within Reach, the AbbVie Foundation and, especially, the many individuals who have donated to our cause. Every contribution, regardless of size, makes a difference and is an investment in education, research, and advocacy to find a cure for chronic pancreatitis. Mission: Cure depends upon your support to continue this important work.
On April 18th, Mission:Cure and NPF hosted the first webinar in our new pancreatitis webinar series.
International pediatric pancreatitis expert Dr. Aliye Uc of the University of Iowa presented the latest research on pancreatitis in children. Please click on this link to listen to the webinar.
We hope you’ll join us for future pancreatitis webinars. Please join our mailing list to receive updates, news and events from Mission:Cure. If you’d like to help Mission: Cure reach our goal to find a cure and more effective treatments for chronic pancreatitis, please DONATE here
Mission: Cure and the National Pancreas Foundation invite you to join us for the first webinar in our new Pancreatitis Webinar Series
Pediatric Pancreatitis: The latest on causes, treatments, outcomes & research. Q & A too!
Dr. Aliye Uc, MD, Professor of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Professor of Radiation Oncology, University of Iowa and leader of the INSPPIRE Pediatric Pancreatitis Research Project will share what has been learned so far, and will answer questions from patients and family members.
Composed of 22 sites throughout the world, the INSPPIRE group was formed to research ways to better diagnose, evaluate and treat Pediatric Pancreatitis.
Mission: Cure is excited to collaborate with Mark Light, who went on a cross-country ride last fall to raise awareness about pancreatitis. Watch his video here to learn more about his adventure inspired by young pancreatitis patient Emme.
Megan Golden presented Mission: Cure’s strategy on the Brookings “Impact Bonds for Health” Webinar on December 12th. View the presentation below. For more information please follow this link to the Brookings Website.
“Mission: Cure” Launched to Harness Innovative Financing and Impact Investing to Cure Disease; Pioneers New Approach by Attacking Pancreatic Disease
New York, New York, Tuesday, November 7, 2017—The new nonprofit Mission: Cure will convene the world’s leading pancreatic experts at the American Pancreatic Association meeting in San Diego on November 10th to devise a 10-year plan to cure chronic pancreatitis, a painful and costly pancreatic disease, using an innovative financing model that could be applied to cure other diseases.
Building on the global movement toward outcome-based financing, Mission: Cure will partner with healthcare payers and philanthropists to provide financial incentives for improving patient outcomes. Mission: Cure will work with researchers, clinicians, patients, providers, industry, and entrepreneurs to achieve those outcomes.
The strategies will include using advanced genetic testing and data aggregation tools (precision medicine), working with scientists and the FDA to efficiently move promising therapies into clinical trials, and repurposing drugs approved for other diseases. “Repurposing already-approved drugs is a faster and less expensive way to get new treatments to patients. Cures Within Reach has facilitated numerous successful repurposing efforts and will help Mission: Cure deploy this strategy as its fiscal sponsor,” said Cures Within Reach CEO Dr. Bruce Bloom.
Joe Titlebaum, Chair of the National Pancreas Foundation, said, “Mission: Cure’s groundbreaking approach is at the cutting edge of efforts to cure disease. The more than one million people suffering from chronic pancreatitis globally will benefit from their focused effort to bring new therapies to people in need.”
Mission: Cure will work with the growing group of impact investors who want their investments to produce social benefits in addition to financial return to create a new type of health investment where investors can make a quantifiable impact on people’s health while potentially receiving a return from patient outcome payments and the market.
About Mission: Cure
Mission: Cure is a nonprofit founded in 2017 by Megan Golden, an expert in innovative financing for social and health programs, and her brother Eric Golden, an entrepreneur, investment banker, and pancreatitis patient. Mission: Cure is partnering with the not-for-profit Cures Within Reach, which is serving as its fiscal sponsor, and the National Pancreas Foundation, to pioneer a new approach to curing disease using financing based on patient outcomes and partnerships with impact investors.
