Our Mission

The Gene Therapy Institute for Hispanic Medical Research
mission is to cure and develop novel, efficient and accessible therapies for diseases affecting the Hispanic community.

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Please make a safe donation to the research program of the Gene Therapy Institute. Donations of any amount make a difference. The size of the donation is at your own discretion and will be kept confidential.

Research Overview

The research goal of the Gene Therapy Institute for Hispanic Medical Research is to find new therapies for use as alternative resources to cure diseases affecting the Hispanic community.

Funding will support the Gene Therapy Institute research medical programs:

  • the Cancer Research program will research on the following initial projects: (1) new drugs against breast and prostate cancers, (2) innovative Gene Therapies against prostate cancer, (3) DNA vaccines against cervical cancer, and (4) technology to create nanoparticles loaded with anti-cancer drugs to fight breast cancer. These different projects will be accomplished in collaboration with scientists of neighbor research Universities, Berkeley, Stanford and Davis, and both Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL).
  • The Aging Research program will concentrate on degenerative diseases in particular Alzheimer, Parkinson and heart disease. The cell protection therapies to be developed: (1) cholinesterase inhibitor drugs for Alzheimer's disease, (2) statins, cholesterol-reducing agents, (3) anti-clotting drugs for preventing recurring stroke, (4) angiotension converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and diuretics, ACE inhibitors to be used to treat high blood pressure, and (5) exploratory therapies in nerve cells using Nogo-A brain protein, to restore nerve cells after a stroke-dammaged brain, and early growth response gene 2 (EGR2) involved in nerve fatty coating by myelin protein, keeping nerve electrical signals frunctional.
  • The Stem Cell Research the Institute will establish an innovative facility and include the complete technology for developing new stem cell lines and making them available to the medical community for research purposes.
  • The Skin Research program will concentrate its effort in basal and squamous cell carcinomas, and skin disorders, Psoriasis and Eczema. The Institute will develop drugs genetically produced to have less toxic effects: (1) safer antibodies against HER-2 protein to fight breast cancer, (2) genetically produced immunosuppressive antibodies for leukocyte function antigen-1 (LFA-1), and interferon and beta-blockers to treat psoriasis, (3) new immunomodulators, steroid-free topical therapies to treat eczema, and (4) therapeutic vaccination with MAGE peptides for melanoma treatment.
  • The Biotechnology Research will include the following: (1) Vaccine Vector Program, to engineer novel DNA plasmid vaccines against cancer and skin diseases, (2) Therapeutics program, to establish high-tech systems for screening large numbers of chemicals in order to facilitate fast therapeutic drug discovery, (3) Genomics Program, to understand the genetic basis of skin diseases such as eczema, and (4) Biomedical Engineering Program, to generate technological tools for proteomics and protein modeling, to predict the tertiary structural conformation of protein-drug and protein-atibiotics interactions, generating knowledge about the mechanism of gene regulation and providing the basis to design safer therapeutic drugs.
  • The Diabetics Research program will be directed to (1) type I-diabetes, the failure to produce insulin, often can juvenile diabetes, (2) type II-diabetes, resulting from insulin resistance, often called adult diabetes, and (3) pre-diabetes, a condition that occurs when blood glucose levels are higher than normal. Our objectives will be to develop: (a) Protein Therapy, to block cell death signals by introducing specific peptides, and increasing islet survival and directing stem cells to become insulin-producing islets, (b) Tissue Engineering, to design physical barriers between transplanted islets and the immune system to protect the cells, (c) Gene Therapy researchers will investigate several methods to introduce genes into islets to make them stronger and prevent cell death.

The Gene Therapy Institute will also help promote collaborative research efforts with the leading experts in cancer, aging, diabetics, skin and stem cell research.

Our research programs will be directed by the Institute scientists. The Institute will use ninety percent of every dollar contributed to the organization to be directed to our medical research programs, with only ten percent for administration costs. Research can be costly for example: $150,000 funds one research project for one year; $55,000 funds a laboratory assistant for six months.

For more information, please email us or call (530) 979-1288