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SOME PERSONAL NEWS: Last year, I lost my wife Andrea to a liver disease called autoimmune hepatitis. It’s one of those conditions that’s rare enough to be significantly underfunded, but common enough to kill thousands and blight the lives of very many more. (1/?)
It was, as I wrote in @thesundaytimes ( https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/she-had-our-baby-then-i-lost-her-to-a-silent-killer-gqqqp5xq0), about the most awful experience there can be. But the one silver lining has been the extraordinary outpouring of love and support from family, friends - and complete strangers.
We set up a fundraising page to raise money for research into her memory with an initial target of £25,000. So far, we’ve raised roughly five times that - a tribute to what an amazing person Andrea was and how many lives she touched.
Today, @MedResFdn - the charitable arm of @The_MRC - has announced more than £1 million in research grants for viral and autoimmune hepatitis. One of the four projects, led by @ZaniaStamataki of @unibirmingham, is being funded thanks to the donations in Andrea’s memory.
The reason we partnered with @MedResFdn is because, as part of @the_mrc, their grant programmes are the absolute gold standard. These are the research proposals that the best people in the field felt had the best chance of saving lives.
The start of the project will obviously be slightly delayed, because pretty much every virologist and immunologist is working flat out on COVID-19 - as they should. In fact @ZaniaStamataki has written two brilliant pieces for @guardian on how the virus and immunity work.
(You can read them here https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/20/coronavirus-master-of-disguise-scientists-viruses-covid-19 and here https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/10/heres-how-body-gains-immunity-coronavirus)
This is obviously a strange time to be announcing this. In the past few weeks, unexpectedly losing a loved one to a vicious disease, or watching them struggle with severe illness, has gone from being a shocking rarity to a fact of life for tens of thousands of families.
But I’ve also been reminded of why I so loved running the @Telegraph science pages with @RogerHighfield back in the day, or freelancing for @wellcometrust and others later on.
Because science is fucking amazing. Research is fucking amazing. And scientists and researchers are, generally speaking, fucking amazing.
Science is what will beat COVID. It’s what is beating cancer. And it’s what, I hope, will beat autoimmune hepatitis.
I’ve now shut down that original crowdfunding page, but I’m still raising money for @MedResFdn. If you can give, please do - the charity is matching our funding, but the more we raise, the more it will have to spend on the many other diseases out there. https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/andrea-colvile
And if you've already given, thank you so very, very much.
PS You can read about all the four projects funded today, and the Foundation's work more broadly, here. https://www.medicalresearchfoundation.org.uk/news/new-hepatitis-studies-to-aid-search-for-new-treatments
