Big News from Open Medicine Foundation! #TripleGivingTuesdayOMF

[Ben H]

Hi guys,

Some big news from OMF;

TRIPLE GIVING TUESDAY OMF LAUNCHES TODAY
With big news from Australia!
Dear Ben,

Welcome to the first day of our 2020 Triple Giving Tuesday Campaign! I’m thrilled to announce that Open Medicine Foundation (OMF) will triple all donations up to $333,333, allowing us to meet our ambitious goal to raise $1 Million for ME/CFS research. Thanks to several generous supporters, when you donate to OMF any day of the week, today through International Giving Tuesday, December 1, 2020, your donation will be triple matched:

Your $10 donation
will be tripled to $30
Your $100 donation
will be tripled to $300
Your $1000 donation
will be tripled to $3000

To celebrate our largest fundraising drive of the year, we want to share with you, our valued supporter, some exciting news!

We are proud to announce the launch of OMF Australia with the establishment of the Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration, to be led by our beloved colleague and newest Collaborative Research Center (CRC) Director, Christopher Armstrong, PhD. The Melbourne Collaboration will be the 5th addition to our global network of OMF-established CRCs that include Harvard, Stanford, Uppsala, and Montreal Universities.

We are tremendously grateful for the generous support from Emerge Australia, our Australian partner. Emerge Australia is a national organization providing information, support and advocacy for people with ME/CFS — giving hope and help to more than 250,000 Australians living with the disease.

About Christopher Armstrong

Christopher Armstrong, PhD, will be the Director of the Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration. Chris, OMF's former Science Liaison and Visiting Scholar at Stanford, completed his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Melbourne and has been involved with researching ME/CFS for over a decade. An Australian native, he is perfectly positioned to lead and grow this new research hub for years to come.

The Research
Under the direction of Dr. Armstrong, the team at the Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration will conduct a groundbreaking research program to develop a personalized medical approach for studying and treating ME/CFS.

In its first project, the Melbourne research team will characterize the biology of people with ME/CFS by continuously monitoring their health data and sporadically sampling and analyzing their blood and urine over the course of a year. Data will be analyzed to identify characteristics of disease severity in individuals, then compared across patients to identify patterns — helping reduce the complexity and length of the personalized medical approach.

The expected outcome is the establishment of a condensed personalized research method that can be used to track the development of ME/CFS, provide an understanding of the biology of the disease process in the individual, and monitor outcomes in clinical treatment trials.

Read more about Chris’s research

Your contribution made during the first week of OMF’s 2020 Triple Giving Tuesday will jumpstart our campaign and show your support for young, cutting edge researchers like Dr. Armstrong. It will inspire philanthropy in Australia and all of our Collaborative Research Centers across the globe, energizing our single most important fundraising effort of the year.

Donate today to ensure we can take advantage of the entire matching gift amount

Give any amount, any day of the week — and your gift will be TRIPLED!

If you’re passionate about ending ME/CFS, we encourage you to create your own online fundraiser for OMF. All donations to your fundraiser will be triple matched as well during this campaign!

In a year of great uncertainty, we find promise that the efforts to find a cure for ME/CFS continues to grow. From Australia, Sweden, Canada and the U.S., OMF is leading research — and, with your help, delivering hope for a better future.

 

[Ben H]

A video from OMF:

A Message from OMF Leadership

Open Medicine Foundation (OMF)'s Triple Giving Tuesday campaign is almost a week in! We want to take a moment to share a message from OMF leadership.

Watch the video now:




"ME/CFS takes an incredibly vital human and just puts them in a box that people don't even know they are living in anymore."
- A parent of a child with ME/CFS.

It's time to help people suffering from ME/CFS to get better. And they deserve to get better.

With a foundation staff of patients, caregivers, and family members of people with ME/CFS, we know from first-hand experience how debilitating ME/CFS is — and we are united by our unwavering commitment to end this disease.

And thanks to the support of generous donors from across the globe, OMF is able to support the single largest, concerted nonprofit effort to understand, treat, and eventually cure ME/CFS and the myriad of related diseases.

With the establishment of five Collaborative Research Centers and a network of leading scientists, we are confident that our vision of a world free of ME/CFS is possible.

In the words of OMF Founder & CEO/President, Linda Tannenbaum, "Once we find a cure for ME/CFS, we're going to figure out a lot of chronic complex diseases and be able to help millions and millions of people."

Please be part of this historic effort by supporting #TripleGivingTuesday today. All gifts received from now until International Giving Tuesday, December 1, 2020, are triple matched, helping us to fast-track research into ME/CFS so that we can find treatments and a cure.

The challenges we face are real, and we are dedicated to finding answers.

Thank you for your support! ​

 

[Gemini]

All gifts received from now until International Giving Tuesday, December 1, 2020, are triple matched

Just a note, for U.S. donors, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act(CARES), passed in March, allows taxpayers taking the standard deduction to claim up to $300 in charitable deductions as well.

To qualify you must give to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit which OMF is.

Source: AARP Bulletin, September 2020, p. 34

@Janet Dafoe

 

[Ben H]

Hi guys,

An exciting science update from Montréal and Dr Alain Moreau:

From the desk of Dr. Alain Moreau, PhD
Director of the Collaborative Research Center
at the CHU Sainte-Justine/Université de Montréal

#TripleGivingTuesday Research Update
Promising Research Underway at Montréal Research Center



Dear Ben,

I’m very pleased to share with you, a valued supporter of Open Medicine Foundation (OMF), an update from my team at the OMF-established ME/CFS Collaborative Research Center at Université de Montréal!

Developing a diagnostic tool and prognostic test
Our researchers are actively working to understand the molecular mechanisms that underlie ME/CFS. My team has developed an exciting new diagnostic test, which explores the molecular mechanisms and patterns that change during the early development of Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM) in severe ME/CFS patients.

This test, using a Hexoskin Smart Shirt to induce mild-but-reproducible PEM, has so far uncovered eleven different microRNAs associated with ME/CFS that are capable of differentiating ME/CFS patients from healthy patients — with a 90 percent accuracy! MicroRNAs can represent potential indicators for diseases such as ME/CFS, and changes in microRNA expression could indicate cellular dysfunction and degeneration. Our research could lead to the development of a diagnostic test for ME/CFS and a prognostic tool used to predict future cases.

Studying the role of Thrombospondin-1
Our team of experts is also actively working to understand the role of Thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) in those with ME/CFS. An important biomarker, TSP-1 appears to be associated with changes in the patients' blood flow to the brain as evidenced in our discovery cohort. Elevated blood levels of TSP-1 have been associated with brain fog and memory impairment while reduced levels have been associated with orthostatic intolerance (symptoms that develop when standing but are relieved when reclining) and POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, a condition that affects circulation) in a group of severely ill ME/CFS patients. After validation in larger cohorts, if these findings are confirmed to be important in ME/CFS, then drug therapies can be developed in order to prevent or treat these severe symptoms in ME/CFS patients.



Click the image for more details about the studies


Understanding environmental and genetic influences
Additionally, our team in Montréal seeks to understand how both environmental and genetic influences affect gene expression in the most complex diseases such as ME/CFS. In order to identify the most promising candidate genes, we are currently studying identical twins in which one twin has ME/CFS and the other twin does not, as well as multigenerational families that have many affected members.

These promising studies underway at the University of Montréal are, I believe, bringing us one step closer towards finding a diagnostic test, treatments and a cure for ME/CFS. But we need your help to accelerate this valuable research.

Please join me in supporting Open Medicine Foundation during their Triple Giving Tuesday campaign! When you donate between now and December 1, 2020, your gift will be TRIPLE matched by some very generous donors! That’s triple the impact of accelerating the important research underway at OMF’s five established research centers — an international collaborative of scientists and clinicians focused solely on studying ME/CFS and related chronic, complex diseases.

Join me in our quest to find a cure for ME/CFS!

 

[Strawberry]

This test, using a Hexoskin Smart Shirt to induce mild-but-reproducible PEM, has so far uncovered eleven different microRNAs associated with ME/CFS that are capable of differentiating ME/CFS patients from healthy patients — with a 90 percent accuracy! MicroRNAs can represent potential indicators for diseases such as ME/CFS, and changes in microRNA expression could indicate cellular dysfunction and degeneration. Our research could lead to the development of a diagnostic test for ME/CFS and a prognostic tool used to predict future cases.

This is pretty interesting. And the hexoskin link says they can be purchased. @Ben H do you know if we would be able to buy these and use like heart rate monitors and proving we have these microRNAs? It sure would be nice to prove disability, instead of being told we are fakers!

 

[Ben H]

Hey guys,

A message from OMF:

Giving Thanks for You
#TripleGivingTuesdayOMF

Through the generosity of our supporters worldwide, Open Medicine Foundation (OMF) is pleased to share that we raised over $1,343,847 million USD during our Triple Giving Tuesday campaign, surpassing our goal of $1.2 million! That’s over $1.3 million dollars dedicated to ending ME/CFS and related chronic, complex diseases.

Open Medicine Foundation wants to offer our heartfelt thanks for the generosity of and trust in our community — people like you who support our belief that open and collaborative research is key to finding answers for people with ME/CFS.

Linda Tannenbaum, OMF founder and CEO/president, recorded a special message of gratitude. Please take a minute to listen here:

www.omf.ngo



Thank you to all who donated and support OMF's funding of research!


B