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Investigators Report on Progress: Collaborative Process Accelerates the Pace of Discovery
San Francisco, CA (December 8, 2004) — Scientific updates from the four investigators in the Catalyst For a Cure (CFC) team, the inauguration of the Glaucoma Research Foundation Catalyst Award, and founding gifts for a new capital campaign extending the CFC research through 2007 were highlights of the 2004 CFC Dinner and Report to Donors, held December 8 in San Francisco.
“With its start-up three-year phase now completed” reports GRF President and CEO Thomas M. Brunnner, “our CFC collaboration has made news not just in scientific breakthroughs, but also in the process of how good science can be accelerated, proving that laboratories with a strategic balance of expertise around the country can effectively collaborate, virtually on a daily basis. The promise couldn’t be greater as we begin the next three-year phase.”
Principle investigators in the CFC include David Calkins, PhD, Vanderbilt; Philip Horner, PhD, University of Washington; Nicholas Marsh-Armstrong, PhD, Johns Hopkins University; Monica Vetter, PhD, University of Utah. CFC was originally conceived and funded in a partnership between the Steve and Michele Kirsch Foundation, represented by its Medical and Scientific Director at the time, Sarah Caddick, PhD, and GRF. In keeping with its policy stated at the outset of the collaboration, Kirsch Foundation will not continue its funding into the second phase, leaving GRF and its donors as sole funders.
“Funding the entire program is a tremendous challenge,” Brunner said, “and I’m very pleased to report that the GRF’s Board of Directors voted a special three year $7.5 million campaign to raise the necessary funds to support the CFC and the other research and activities of GRF over the next three years. This is almost double our normal annual budget. But the Board stepped forward with its own commitment to one third of the amount and I’m pleased to say we’ve completed the Board Nucleus Fund of $2.5 million.” Brunner then announced the founding donors to the Nucleus Fund, including June Behrendt, Ted and Melza Barr, Dennis and Charlot Singleton, Bob and Virginia Shaffer, and Deirdre Porter.
The inaugural presentation of the Catalyst Award was made to Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steven and Michele Kirsch. Founder and chairman of Propel Software, a Silicon Valley start-up, Kirsch is perhaps best known as the founder and chairman of Infoseek Corporation, an Internet navigation service that was acquired by Walt Disney Company in November 1999. GRF Chairman Dennis Singleton, framing GRF’s idea for creating the new award, noted the need for “that kind of leadership that makes possible projects like Catalyst For a Cure; leadership that has vision, and an entrepreneur’s intuitive understanding that something new and valuable can become reality.” To make the formal presentation, Singleton introduced GRF’s Houston-based board member, Dr. Ted Barr.
GRF President and CEO Thomas R. Brunner expressed his appreciation to Caddick, and Kathi Gwynn, President and CEO of Kirsch Foundation. Brunner applauded the Foundation’s catalytic role during the critical start-up of the research, bringing together the researchers, and then partnering with GRF to fund the first three-year phase giving time enough to produce measurable results and prove the promise of the CFC concept.
With this start-up phase now completed – and with startling scientific breakthroughs in hand as a result — Gwynn re-affirmed Kirsch’s long-standing philosophy of moving on with the completion of the initial work. “CFC has now shown that this research approach can not only work, but genuinely accelerate the discovery process,” Gwynn said. “There is every reason why more donors should get involved – and quickly — to keep this momentum going.”
“The Board has challenged us all,” Brunner concluded, “to consider a significant increase in our annual giving to insure that this important research is continued to move us that much closer to a cure.”