There are some ways you can support our project:

Volunteer to donate some of your transplanted heart tissue. If you have IDC and are currently on a heart transplant list, you can be of tremendous help with our effort to identify the gene(s) that cause IDC. After transplant, pieces of your old heart are normally used for routine pathology studies and the rest is discarded. However, your heart tissue may help us in uncovering the genetic cause of IDC and is very valuable! We have developed a protocol for obtaining heart tissue from individuals who are on a heart transplant waiting list, and we will gladly mail you and your transplant team the materials you need to have several small portions of your heart muscle saved for research. The protocol is easy to follow and will require a joint effort by yourself and your transplant team. We have successfully implemented this protocol at distant sites.

Assist us in locating a screening site if we are screening your family at a site distant to our lab. We travel all over the United States to screen families with FDC in both large cities and rural areas. We rely on the assistance of other physicians and institutions to use their facilities and equipment for our screening. If we are planning a screening trip for your family and if you know of a physician who may be willing to let us borrow their office for a weekend, please let us know!

Make a tax-deductible contribution to support this research project. Our research effort is funded primarily through the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), an institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. We have also received support from local grant sources, from the Oregon Affiliate of the American Heart Association, and from individual donors. Despite NIH support, our funding is limited. For more information about this, please see our July 2009 newsletter issue. We accept any donations to support this effort. All contributions are tax deductible. Donations should be sent to:

Elizabeth Goldberg, Director of Development
Department of Medicine
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
P.O. Box 016960 (R-100), Miami, FL 33101
1500 NW 12th Avenue - JMT, Suite 1020 East
Miami, FL 33136
Phone: (305) 243-3492; Fax: (305) 243-7456
egoldberg@med.miami.edu

Checks should be payable to: University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

Memo part of the check: Familial Dilated Cardiomyopathy Research, account number 304293.

Please contact us for further information on how to submit donations.