The Battersby Lab received a $55,000 donation from US donors to advance our understanding of mitochondrial diseases, thereby enhancing future treatments and the possibility of finding cures.
The Battersby Lab, located at the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Helsinki, received a $55,000 donation to support their research into mitochondrial diseases and C12orf65 deficiency, also known as CMT6 with Leigh Syndrome.
The goal is to develop an effective treatment approach for C12orf65 deficiency that could be extended to other human mitochondrial diseases, which affects an estimated one in 5000 people worldwide. This would mark a significant breakthrough in the hunt for treatments and cures for inherited mitochondrial diseases.
In particular, this donation provides the necessary funding for generating research data needed to support a large pre-clinical research application to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States of America.
Research Director and Battersby Lab Group Leader Dr Brendan Battersby underlined the importance of the donation, stating:
"This donation provides us with critical experimental resourcing to perform some challenging experiments this year, which we need to show to secure large scale funding for the therapeutic approach that I am developing in collaboration with Prof Robert Burgess (Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME, USA)."
This development is only possible due to the support of the Hereditary Neuropathy Foundation (HNF), Lindsey Flynt and Debi Houliares. Based in the US, the donors have worked tirelessly to raise awareness and to offer support for those affected by Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) and related neuropathies.
For them, it is a personal battle.
