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Click below to donate to our effort.

HDF Everest Expedition: O'Brien's Everest - We are seeking to become the first American brothers to summit Mount Everest together, which we hope to accomplish in the spring of 2005. Our intent is to raise money for the Hereditary Disease Foundation, which funds scientific research seeking cures for diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's. It is one of the most highly rated charities in the US, and is of personal significance to us, having lost several family members to Huntington's Disease.

Nancy Wexler Featured on NPR’s All Things Considered: New York, New York – May 16, 2004– “Reading Genes for Disease, Part 3: Huntington's Researcher's Work Led to Genetic Test – and Family Dilemma”

Venezuelan Kindreds Reveal Genetic and Environmental Factors Influence Onset of Huntington’s Disease: New York, New York – March 2, 2004– The age at which Huntington’s disease starts is not solely determined by the Huntington’s disease gene, as previously believed, but is strongly influenced by genetic and environmental factors, according to new findings from a team led by Columbia University Medical Center researcher and president of the Hereditary Disease Foundation Dr. Nancy Wexler.

To Huntington's Disease Researchers: The Hereditary Disease Foundation is pleased to announce its biennial symposium - "HD2004: Changes, Advances, and Good News (CAG)_n” - on August 12-15, 2004, Royal Sonesta Hotel, Cambridge, MA.

  "HDF Commits Over $20 Million in 2003 to Find New Treatments and a Cure for Huntington's Disease."  See Our Latest Newsletter, Available Now! [.pdf version (3.7MB) ] [.jpg version]

Our program includes research grants, John J. Wasmuth postdoctoral fellowships, Milton Wexler postdoctoral fellowships, the Lieberman Award, as well as our fast-track Cure HD Initiative (CHDI). A centerpiece of the Foundation is the program of interdisciplinary Mary Jennifer Selznick workshops held many times during the year. These small, informal, free-wheeling workshops foster dialogue among researchers, from a variety of fields, who come without prepared lectures or slides to converse across disciplinary borders.

The Hereditary Disease Foundation focuses on Huntington's disease, a fatal, autosomal-dominant neurological illness causing involuntary movements, severe emotional disturbance and cognitive decline. Huntington's disease usually strikes in mid-life, in the thirties or forties, although it can also attack children and the elderly. There is no treatment to halt the inexorable progression, which leads to death after ten to twenty-five years. Because it is an autosomal-dominant disorder, each child of a parent with Huntington's disease has a 50% risk of inheriting the illness. In the United States, the prevalence of the disease is about 10 cases per 100,000 people - about 30,000 people in all. There are another 150,000 individuals at risk.

Because Huntington's disease destroys so many different capabilities - intellectual, physical and emotional - the insights gained from research on this illness are relevant to the understanding of many other, including schizophrenia, manic depression, Alzheimer's, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), Parkinson's disease, and cancer. By focusing on Huntington's disease as a model, the Hereditary Disease Foundation targets neurological and genetic functions relevant to a broad spectrum of disorders.

Formed in 1968, the Hereditary Disease Foundation spearheaded the Venezuela Collaborative Huntington's Disease Project, which led to the identification in 1983 of a genetic marker for Huntington's disease. That landmark finding demonstrated for the first time that the newly developed DNA markers could be used successfully to map human genes.

Venezuelan children. Some of the many at-risk Venezuelans
whose donations of blood tissue samples helped to find the gene.

Following that momentous discovery, the Hereditary Disease Foundation organized the Huntington's Disease Collaborative Research Group, which in 1993 captured the Huntington's disease gene - one of a newly identified class of disease genes whose signature is an excess of trinucleotide repeats; for example, the genes for Fragile X, the most common form of mental retardation, myotonic dystrophy, Kennedy's disease (spinobulbar muscular dystrophy), Haw River Syndrome, 3 types of hereditary ataxia, SCI1, Machado Joseph disease and Friedrich's ataxia.

The Hereditary Disease Foundation continues its support of cutting-edge science, including the development of mouse models, studies of protein-protein interactions, strategies for gene therapy, and intercellular signaling in striatal neurons. Through grants, fellowships, the CHDI, and the workshop program, the Foundation continues to build a research community committed to the cure of Huntington's disease and related disorders.

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