Giving | HOPE FOR KATHERINE BELLE

TODAY is Kentucky Gives Day, an online 24-hour annual fundraising event bringing charities and Kentuckians—near and far—together for a powerful day of action.

Last year, the NUBPL Foundation won 2nd place overall for most funds raised in 24 hours. Impressive! With your donation TODAY, we aim to win 1st place and win an additional $1,500 for research. In case you missed it, here’s an in-depth article from The Pennsylvania Gazette about the critical research you are supporting.

Research dollars are difficult to come by for rare diseases, and your generous donation goes a long way toward helping us meet our goals. NUBPL is a progressive disease with zero FDA approved treatments. Once the brain cells have died, there is no bringing them back.

We are racing against time to save our children.

As the parents of a six-year old affected by this devastating disease, we cannot thank you enough for supporting our cause and helping keep hope alive for her future. Thank you!

Click here to make your tax-deductible donation.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead

In 2015, our (now) 5-year old daughter, Katherine Belle, was diagnosed with an extremely rare Mitochondrial Complex 1 disease caused by mutations in the NUBPL gene.

The harsh reality is we have a vibrant and amazing five-year old daughter who fights daily with everything she has, but because NUBPL is a recently discovered disease without any available treatments, we do not know what the future holds in terms of her health and disease progression.

As tireless advocates for our daughter, we decided to do more. We founded the NUBPL Foundation to fund research for NUBPL, which causes progressive atrophy in our daughter’s cerebellum, as well as speech and developmental delays.

Katherine is just one of 11 patients in the WORLD identified in scientific research, although we believe the number of confirmed NUBPL patients is likely closer to between 25 to 50. All patients have been diagnosed through Whole Exome Sequencing (WES), and we have no doubt that the NUBPL patient population will continue to increase as more families use WES to diagnosis their children. We have been very public about our story so that we can help clinicians and families better diagnose NUBPL in the future.

Because orphan diseases are rare, they lack support groups and national organizations. And, 95% of rare diseases do not have any FDA approved treatments, including NUBPL. Orphan diseases don’t attract as many research dollars because few people are affected, and for pharmaceutical companies, there’s less incentive to fund the research for a treatment that will not produce a good return on their investment.

Our daughter and other affected children deserve better.

We have carefully listened to proposals from top researchers from around the country and have decided to fund the promising research of Dr. Marni Falk at the University of Pennsylvania. The Mitochondrial-Genetic Disease Clinic at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is one of the top research centers in the nation for Mitochondrial related diseases. This research gives us hope that therapies will soon be developed to help treat the mitochondrial dysfunction of Katherine and other NUBPL patients.

100% of your tax-deductible donation will directly fund the research of Dr. Marni Falk and her team at CHOP to research the NUBPL gene and to develop life-enhancing treatments for the mitochondrial dysfunction of Katherine and other NUBPL patients.

Our matching gift pool from our Double The Hope partners will match every donation – DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR – we receive from you on April 18, 2017, to ensure we reach our $25,000 goal.

Click on the picture to donate to the NUBPL Foundation: