Our Mission

To secure and allocate funds for medical research and treatment enhancements.

Our History

In the seven years since Tara Bean lost her battle with cancer, tremendous advances have been made in medical research. Among these advances is the completion of the detailed inventory of all the genes in the human, known as the human genome sequence.

This inventory, consisting of roughly 3 billion letters of genetic code, allows doctors for the first time to understand diseases with incredible detail; at the level of precisely which genes are defective, absent or overexpressed.

Armed with this knowledge and using an array of advanced therapeutic strategies, doctors can potentially repair a patient's cells, replacing genes that are missing, and turning off genes that are hyperactive. But in order to produce and test life-saving therapies based on advances like RNAi, and completion of the human genome sequence, much more work is needed.

The University of Massachusetts Medical School

The University of Massachusetts Medical School is rising to the challenge. In 2007 they announced the creation of an Advanced Therapeutic Center. This center will recruit approximately 45 new doctors who, along with their research teams, will be housed in a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to the development of gene-targeted therapies like RNAi