New Year Matching Donation Offer!

What a great way to help us see in the New Year - all donations to two of our JustGiving fundraising pages for Invest in ME charity - including donations by text - will be matched £1 for £1 up to a combined amount of £1250 until 6th January! 

We have received the wonderful offer of £1250 (£1000 + £250 Gift Aid) as a matching donation by an incredibly generous friend of Team Let's do it for ME! This is in support of the UK rituximab clinical treatment trial being organised at University College London by Invest in ME.. The matching period runs from New Year's Eve to Twelfth Night on 6th January. It will apply to two of our JustGiving pages.

1. Ruth Gilchrist's 1st of each month One Day – One Pound (1 Day - £1) - minimum donation is £1 by JustTextGiving by texting this code - APFR99 - and the amount - £1 (or £2, £3, £4, £5, £10) - to 70070 - or from £2 via the JustGiving page:
http://www.justgiving.com/onedayonepound

2. Sue Page's small change to change M.E., which she launched on 1st January last year, so if you've been collecting your small change over the year, time to add it up and be counted in! http://www.justgiving.com/Sue-Page1

The £1250 includes Gift Aid (25% extra from the government on donations made by UK tax-payers so don't forget to tick the Gift Aid box when you donate if it applies to you) but all donations will count towards the total matched amount, whether or not you live in UK or are a UK tax-payer.

The combined total of the two pages at the time of the announcement was £6505 (inc. Gift Aid) so all donations from this amount will be counted and matched £1 for £1 until a combined total of £7755 (inc. Gift Aid) is reached or until 6th January if we haven't reached the full matched amount.

So don't delay – donate today and let's get the New Year off to a flying start!

Links to more info ..

IiME/UCL/UK rituximab trial microsite
http://ukrituximabtrial.org/
Invest in ME (Research)
www.investinme.org
Let's do it for ME!
http://ldifme.org/

*Let's do it for ME! is a patient-driven campaign in support of the independent UK charity Invest in ME (Research) and funds for the biomedical research into myalgic encephalomyelitis that the charity is organising and/or funding. Invest in ME is run entirely by unpaid volunteers who either have ME or are parents and carers of ME patients. They are driving the agenda of scientific biomedical research into diagnostic tests and treatments for myalgic encephomyelitis in UK in collaboration with international researchers of world renown - 2014 will be an exciting year for progress in M.E. research*

Thank you for your support throughout the year - Happy New Year to one and all!

IiME/UCL Rituximab Fund £50k! Work can begin!

Invest in ME Invest in ME Statement The UK Rituximab Trial for ME August 2013 On 6th June Invest in ME announced that we were in discussions to set up a UK trial of rituximab for ME patients and since that announcement things have been progressing well. The charity had been working on trying to get such a trial started since the IIMEC7 conference. In updates published through June/July, we have stated that all that is required for the trial to proceed is the funding. As such, IiME began fundraising for this trial and invited everyone to support us in this project. Recently we arranged a specific web site which has been set up to inform on all aspects of the UK rituximab trial. This is at - www.ukrituximabtrial.org and we reiterated the current status -  We have the facilities available. We have the researchers available. We have the best expertise possible available. We have the means of fundraising for this trial available (see The MATRIX - click here) and we have a campaign to raise funds As we have agreed with our advisor, Professor Jonathan Edwards, the proposed clinical trial will undergo a rigorous peer review process. We have reached this position thanks to the vision, efforts and help from Professor Edwards, Dr Cambridge, UCL and our supporters. We have emphasised from when we announced the trial that the only element required is funding. IiME will continue organising and raising funds for this trial. The IiME BRF Rituximab fund is specifically ring-fenced in a separate account for the UK rituximab trial. The first part of the trial will be a preliminary study which will confirm the earlier work of Dr Amolak Bansal [1] on B-cells but using a different cohort of ME patients. Professor Edwards believes this is a useful study in its own right and a pre-requisite for the clinical trial. Meanwhile work is continuing on the design of a protocol which will be finalised after the trip to Bergen that IiME and Professor Edwards have arranged. Good progress is being made and IiME are committed to expedite this trial as best we can. To achieve this IiME has recently been in discussions with a charitable foundation with a view to help in funding this work. We are enormously pleased to announce that, thanks to the extraordinary generosity and support of the foundation's representative, our biomedical research fund for the UK rituximab trial has now reached £50,000. This is due to a donation from the charitable foundation which will match our existing BRF rituximab total of £25,000. The charitable foundation currently wishes to remain anonymous but they have asked us to keep them informed of the progress of plans for the trial and we are sure that the ME community will join us in thanking them for this wonderful support This now means that the first part of this project can be initiated by the UCL team without delay. We thank all those who are supporting this trial and we will continue to provide information on the status of the trial as we progress. We now resolve to increase our efforts to raise the remaining funds for the trial and ask for your continued support in this project in the knowledge that it will benefit all people with ME and their families. The fundraising for this trial is being organised and coordinated by IiME so please contact IiME directly if you or your organisation would like to assist or contribute.   If anyone would like to ask any questions about the UK rituximab trial then please use the Contact form on the rituximab web site (click here). In summary we feel that the best research team possible to undertake this trial is now able to begin the work) - taking a huge leap forward in ME research in the UK.   Thank You. References: 1 Bradley, A. S., Ford, B. and Bansal, A. S. (2013), Altered functional B cell subset populations in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome compared to healthy controls. Clinical & Experimental Immunology, 172: 73–80. doi: 10.1111/cei.12043http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cei.12043/abstract   WWW.UKRITUXIMABTRIAL.ORG   Support ME Awareness - Invest in ME

August 2013