As many of you know, Texans for Cures supports the groundbreaking work taking place at the Texas Heart Institute lead by Dr. James T. Willerson, President Emeritus and Dr. Doris Taylor, Director of Regenerative Medicine.
Dr. Taylor is on the verge of creating a prototype of a living, beating human heart that could one day be ready to be placed in the chest of someone on the cusp of death.
Texans for Cures is committing our fundraising efforts beginning now through December 2020 to Dr. Taylor’s world renowned lab.
As we approach the holidays and the season of giving, we are asking you to assist Dr. Taylor with her groundbreaking research.
I have included below an excerpt from Dr. Taylors paper that tells of a truly fantastic story. One that if you didn’t know any better you’d guess it came straight from a science fiction novel. But it didn’t. As Peter Diamandis, the author of Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, said “The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.” Your generosity towards this groundbreaking advancement will ultimately change the way heart disease is treated forever.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions…
David L. Bales, Chairman (512) 797-2703 Bales@TexansForCures.org
WE ARE COMMITTED TO CURING THE NUMBER ONE KILLER WORLDWIDE – HEART DISEASE. BY BUILDING A HUMAN HEART IN THE LABORATORY – WE ARE CREATING THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE TODAY.
WE ARE COMMITTED TO CURING THE NUMBER ONE KILLER WORLDWIDE – HEART DISEASE. BY BUILDING A HUMAN HEART IN THE LABORATORY – WE ARE CREATING THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE TODAY. WHAT CAN YOU DO TO MAKE SURE THIS WORK CONTINUES?
BUILDING A HUMAN HEART IN 2019: A MESSAGE FROM DR. DORIS TAYLOR
Full Transcript Found Here: BUILDING A HUMAN HEART IN 2019: A MESSAGE FROM DR. DORIS TAYLOR
When my twin brother and I were born in California, the doctors told my mother that we would not survive. We did, but my brother suffered throughout his life. Six years later my father died after a short illness and we moved to the Deep South. For me, quality of life and why I am here questions then haunted me as a little girl growing up. Watching the world from my Mississippi point of view, where important things were happening, I dreamed of changing the world for people who were sick, especially for those who suffered every day.
My career as a scientist has been punctuated by a long line of superiors, colleagues, and grant makers saying, “no, never going to happen” or “you and your ideas are crazy.” As someone who has had to watch others struggle to survive, I’ve learned to trust myself, to trust my instincts, and, most importantly, to trust my crazy ideas. Despite hitting walls of “no,” I achieved things that were unimaginable at the time—the 1st heart cell therapy experiments in 1998, a few years later the 1st experiments to show stem cells in heart disease differed in men and women, and in 2008 the crazy idea that something as simple as a type of dishwashing soap could take away all of the material in a heart or other organ and basically leave the plumbing and skeleton behind. That was an idea that changed the future of transplantation science.
Today the only definitive cure for heart failure is a heart transplant. Yet, as a transplant surgeon once put it succinctly, “In our line of work, someone has to die for someone else to live.” I and others have refused to accept this as “hard” fact. The truth is that there will never be enough people who die to provide pristine organs to meet the ever-increasing demand for transplantable organs. I’m proud to belong to Texas Heart Institute (THI) in Houston, Texas, “the home of heart,” founded by the great Dr. Denton Cooley, who said, shortly before he died: “If you are a ship out in the ocean and someone throws you a life preserver, you don’t look at it to see if it has been approved by the federal government.”From Dr. Cooley’s first human heart transplant in the US, to the conceptualization of the total artificial mechanical heart and Bud Frazier’s left ventricular assist device (LVAD) revolution, to our groundbreaking bioartificial heart —THI has pushed the boundaries of the possible before it was a catch phrase.
Dr Doris Taylor, Texas Heart Institute
In fact, heart transplant and LVADs, the therapies that can extend lives for people who are at the end of that road, would not exist today without individual citizens stepping up to fund such “high risk”’ research endeavors. The next “crazy idea,” the next first – a human heart built in the lab from a patient’s own cells – is no different.
Imagine a world where a patient who needs a heart transplant can go to a lab and provide a sample of their cells. A facility led by experts in cell biology and tissue engineering would exponentially grow the patient’s cells to the tune of billions. Using the technique developed by my lab, they would create a “ghost heart” from a human-sized pig heart, reseed it with the patient’s cells, and then grow and mature the heart in an artificial body, a bioreactor. The patient then would receive a heart transplant that his or her body accepts, saving their life and eliminating the need for lifelong anti-rejection drugs.
This next critical step however will only be accomplished through private donations. We’re at the point of creating a prototype of a living, beating human heart that could one day be ready to be placed in the chest of someone on the cusp of death. A heart that could give a normal life to this person without the need for a lifetime of organ rejection drugs. Our whole heart engineering has moved from a crazy idea, to one that is within sight of becoming reality. The only thing standing in the way is the immediate need for resources to keep this effort alive.
I’m reaching out to you to ask if you can help me find $500,000 through a single gift or smaller donations to keep this effort alive for 3 months. I’ve attached a one-page scientific summary and a technical scope that describes our accomplishments in more technical language and will be happy to send you a PBS NOVA episode called Transplanting Hope where you see both the heartbreaking unmet need for organs and the hope of our technology.
I appreciate your taking the time to consider this request. I know it’s not every day that someone asks you to invest in proving a scientific breakthrough where the outcome is not guaranteed, but this is the way the marvels of modern medicine, especially in the realm of stem cell science and transplantation, have become lifesaving realities.
Upon receiving this funding, in 6 to 8 months, we will accomplish a breakthrough: Building a human pediatric-sized beating heart in the laboratory; keeping it alive for 2 months; and reporting these findings nationally and internationally. You can become part of our team!
