Greenview Hepatitis C Fund

Mission:

Despite the vast number of people with hepatitis C, the seriousness of the disease and the alarming number of deaths, research for a cure or better treatment receives very little funding. The Greenview Foundation’s Hepatitis C Fund exists to raise money for medical research, primarily in the form of seed money for promising research projects that might not otherwise progress far enough to be eligible for large grants. We are particularly interested in these main areas:
1. Non- Interferon based treatment(s) because most treatment side effects stem from this
drug.
2. Non-invasive diagnostic procedures to assess disease progression because a liver biopsy, the current standard of assessment, is unpleasant, expensive and carries it’s own risks.
Patients will avoid having a liver biopsy if at all possible and jeopardize their chances of survival
3. Methods to decrease side effects of available treatments because not only can side effects deter a patient from completing treatment, they can also be serious and permanent.

Program Highlights/Accomplishments:

In 2008 – 2009, we helped fund a research project headed by Michael Volk, MD, MSc, of the University of Michigan which measured the public health impact of current Hepatitis C treatments. The descriptive study on treatment rates of hepatitis C, titled “Alarming Trend: Antiviral Therapy to Treat Hepatitis C is Declining in the US” was published in the Dec. 2009 issue of Hepatology, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. A press release is available and more detailed summaries are available at ScienceDaily, EurekAlert, and PhysOrg.

We are currently funding a study at the University of Michigan, headed by Dr. Andrew Tai, to seek out the genes causing HCV in order to turn them off. The study has received a $40,000 grant from the U of M Cancer Center. Our latest goal is to provide the entire base salary of the second researcher on this study.

More Information:

www.hepcfund.org