On Wednesday 17th March the Duchenne Research Fund hosted a virtual evening to share updates with supporters about research funded by the charity.

Our co-founders Kerry & Doron Rosenfeld welcomed hundreds of viewers from across five continents who came together to learn more about the DRF’s most recent achievements and the challenges Covid has presented for the Duchenne arena.

We were so thrilled that Gavriel Rosenfeld, Kerry & Doron’s 19 year old son, joined the event in conversation with Dr Ronni Cohn (President and CEO of Sick Kids Hospital, Toronto) to talk about living with Duchenne, mental health, juggling school and hospital visits, and his thoughts about Duchenne research, music and life in general.

Watch the full event below:

Dr Cohn, who is also Chair of the DRF’s Scientific Advisory Board, paid tribute to its dedicated supporters, saying that DRF’s seed funding of Solid Biosciences’ gene therapy program had been enabled by the support of all the donors, and created momentum and investor appetite for Duchenne muscular dystrophy research.

“I think it’s fair to say that the initial support of the DRF to Solid’s gene therapy program was the catalyst that the field needed to finally move gene therapy to the clinical stage,” he said, citing that there are now four gene therapy clinical trials ongoing for Duchenne, with a fifth likely to start soon.

Research updates were presented by Dr Joel Schneider, CTO of Solid Biosciences; Dr Barry Byrne, Associate Chair of Paediatrics at the University of Florida; and Great Ormond Street Hospital Senior Research Physiotherapist Victoria Selby. You can hear all their insights at the link above.

Click here to learn more about our research projects.