What is #GivingTuesday?

“We have a day for giving thanks…now, we have #GivingTuesday, a global day dedicated to giving back. On Tuesday, December 1, 2015, charities, families, businesses, community centers, and students around the world will come together for one common purpose: to celebrate generosity and to give.” www.givingtuesday.org

Why give? Why now? Why us?

The holidays are close and so many things need my attention: shopping for holiday meals, a hair cut for my son, new clothes my daughter. I will want buy gifts for my dear family and friends. Especially now, the daily demands on my time and budget are innumerable. I ask myself, why give, why now?  

Right now we are healthy. My aging parents don’t struggle with disease. My children are thriving. We are so very lucky.

What will my small gift do? And what does giving to research really accomplish?

My friend has macular degeneration. I watched my grandmother lose her clarity to Alzheimer’s to the point of not recognizing her daughter, my mother. I have a colleague whose daughter lost her eye to retinoblastoma, a rare cancer of the eye. My cousin’s son has autism. Will my small gift change their lives?  I don’t want to risk the possibility that it might. And without my gift, it surely will not.

Every gift helps quicken the pace of research.

NSCI is the first private stem cell institute in the US.  We have a history of turning small gifts into progress….

-NSCI is currently using stem cells to model Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease to understand why the cells in the brain degenerate and identify novel drugs to prevent this.

-NSCI uses stem cells to model the early stages of brain development to understand how it is affected in Autism.

-NSCI has discovered a stem cell population in the human eye with the ability to generate cells that can be transplanted into Macular Degeneration patients.  NSCI has translated this discovery into a therapeutic product that is on track to begin an FDA approved clinical trial in 2017.

-NSCI has developed a novel way to encourage stem cells in an injured spinal cord to activate and promote repair.

Your generosity and partnership can be powerful tools enabling scientific discovery. Help us build the foundation that future therapy and treatments will be built on.

Click here to give today.

The Regenerative Research Foundation’s Neural Stem Cell Institute (NSCI) has been awarded a grant from New York State’s Spinal Cord Injury Research Board (SCIRB). Following on previous work conducted at NSCI, this award will fund a multi-year project to explore the utility of specific factors (IL10 and SHH) to promote regeneration in an injured spinal cord.

Learn more about all of the awards made by SCIRB at this link.

This just in from New Yorkers to Cure Paralysis, read their letter below and then:

• Lend your voice to support this important program, tell your legislator
• Learn more about New Yorkers to Cure Paralysis, click here.
• Learn more about the NY Spinal Cord Injury Research Board, click here.

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Dear SCIRP Supporter: 

The New York State Assembly and Senate have fully funded the Spinal Cord Injury Research Program at $8.5 million in their respective one-house budget bills.  Thank you for all of the work you have done so far.  We are getting close to our goal of fully restoring the program.

The state budget is scheduled to conclude in about two weeks.  Budget conference committee meeting activity began yesterday and negotiations toward a final budget are in full swing.  We ask that you get in touch with your Assembly and Senate members early this week to thank them for their support and urge them to continue their advocacy on behalf of SCIRP.  Specifically, please ask them to weigh in on behalf of full funding ($8.5 million), with the Health Budget Subcommittee Chairs Senator Kemp Hannon and Assembly member Richard Gottfried, as well as Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.

You can find your legislative members here: http://act.commoncause.org/site/PageServer?pagename=sunlight_advocacy_list_page

Thank you very much for your support of the NY Spinal Cord Injury Research Program.

New Yorkers To Cure Paralysis Board of Directors David Carmel, Nancy Lieberman, Paul Francis and Paul Richter

Join some of our investigators at the Second Annual Next Gen Stem Cell Conference where young investigators will present their work from many different aspects of stem cell research. The meeting is designed to network young investigators with graduate students, post-docs and senior investigators in an intimate setting. There will be a wide range of panels and topics.

Featured Topics

• Embryonic stem cell maintenance and differentiation
• iPSC generation
• Neural stem cells
• Haematopoietic stem cells
• Epigenetics and stem cells
• An artist’s approach to data presentation
• Utilization of stem cell core facilities

More info and registration at the conference website.