Lynn Egan assumes role of Interim President

Dear AHC Families,

The AHCF Board of Directors is pleased to announce that Lynn Egan, our current Vice President, will act as interim President, assuming the responsibilities of President of the Foundation. Lynn’s daughter Kathleen, 22 years-old has AHC and inspired Lynn to dedicate 20 years to the Foundation. Lynn lives in California with her husband Mark and their children Stephanie, Greg and Kathleen.
We are also pleased to announce that Mollie Erpenbeck, a current Executive Committee Board member, will act as interim Fundraising chair, assuming the responsibilities of the position. Mollie lives in Kentucky with her husband Eric, 6 year-old twins Ava and Owen, and their three year-old son, Austin (AHC). In two years, Mollie has helped raise approximately $53,000 for the foundation and has served on the foundation board since 2011.

Lynn and Mollie graciously volunteered for these extra duties since Jeff Wuchich tendered his resignation from the board and as president of the foundation on Monday, November 26,2012. We thank Jeff for his service to the foundation since 2010. We wish Jeff, Renee and Matthew well.

While the next month will be busy celebrating the holidays with family and friends, the AHCF Board of Directors is happy to share several exciting activities taking place.

• A $95,000 grant was awarded to Dr Alfred George Jr. and Dr Kevin Ess at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. to study the functions of AHC gene mutations, allowing for the identification of drugs or drug like compounds with the potential therapeutic effects in restoring normal gene function and to develop advanced human cell models of AHC based on state of the art stem cell technologies.
• A $52,000 grant was awarded to Dr Swoboda at the University of Utah to identify additional causative gene(s) in patients without mutations in ATP1A3.
• A $100,000 grant request was made by Dr Kenneth Silver at the University of Chicago. We are actively seeking funds to hopefully work with Dr Silver in the near future.
• We were notified that researchers at Duke University plan to submit a grant request to the foundation and eagerly await their submission.
• Michael Derby, from Norphan Pharmaceuticals, has notified the foundation that he plans to award the foundation a $2,000 grant in the next several weeks.
• Dr Sandra Reyna will be speaking at the upcoming symposium in Brussels. She was awarded a $1,500 grant from the foundation to assist in travel expenses.
• Dr Kathy Swoboda will be meeting with the research team from Vanderbilt University to further collaborations between our grant recipients.
• Mary Kay Riley and Paul Hodes are currently coordinating fundraisers with Charity Mania sweepstakes  around the regular football season.
• Paul Hodes is also planning to coordinate a Charity Mania sweepstakes event for the NFL Super Bowl.
• Mollie Erpenbeck is currently coordinating a Charity Mania sweepstakes event for the NCAA March Madness.

As the AHCF Foundation continues to dedicate our efforts to raising money to fund research centered on AHC, we look forward to finding new opportunities to achieve our mission and support the patients and families living with AHC. We hope you will join us. Stay tuned for more exciting information in the days ahead.

Sincerely,

The AHCF Board of Directors

Gene Andrasco, Sharon Ciccodicola, Cate Cohen, Lynn Egan, Mollie Erpenbeck, Dr Joe George, Bill Gerber, Doug Morris, Vicky Platt, Carol Presunka, Mary Kay Riley, and Suzanne Roberts.