Three months after our son Anton was born he was diagnosed with Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH). Our world was in turmoil as we struggled with this threat to his life. Fortunately, the disease was correctly diagnosed within a month. Anton responded well to the treatment and has been in remission since then. For details on Anton's experience, click here.

Once our lives began to stabilize, we felt strongly about helping other families facing this disease. We decided to launch an event to raise funds for research into a cure for histiocytosis. In September 2001 we kicked of our first "Hike for a Cure". With an intrepid group of immediate family and friends we raised $12,000 that year. It was a great experience on many levels and inspired us to make this an annual event.

Eleven years have passed since that first hike. Together we have raised more than $1.5M! Yet a cure is not in hand yet. Our pledge at the 2010 H4AC opening session was that we will focus our energy on helping researchers find a cure for histiocytosis by 2020. It is an ambitious goal, but once we have put that goal out there we can start to focus our efforts on that result.

We feel that the time is right to select the most promising research underway on the various histiocytic diseases and provide substantial funding to accelerate that work. We have joined with other parents that share this goal of finding a cure and have established The Histio CURE Foundation as an all volunteer, non-profit designed to collect and distribute donations with the most minimum of cost structure in order to directly fund the doctors doing this promising work.