CureFFI.org followers – today you can vote for us to win $10,000 for prion disease research in the Rare Disease Challenge.

If you haven’t read our story yet, Prion Alliance is a deeply personal endeavor.  Not a year and a half ago, we weren’t scientists and had never heard of fatal familial insomnia.  Genetic testing has changed our lives and now our goal is to change the world.  In addition to running this blog, we also started a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Prion Alliance, launched a fundraising campaign (donate here), and started a research collaboration with George Carlson and several other researchers.

Rare Disease Challenge is a contest to win donated biotech services and $10,000 in cash. Our proposal, submitted last year, is to create isogenic stem cell lines from Sonia’s skin and use them to understand how the FFI mutation causes prion formation and how we can treat it. (For more scientific background see TALENs/ZFNs and cell reprogramming).

Rare Genomics, the organization running the competition, announced today that we are a Gold winner and a finalist for the cash prize – but we need your vote to win. Click here to vote for us on Facebook!  Thank you!