Building the Cure Foundation was created to raise awareness about Congenital Heart Disease (CHD). Our foundation will donate all proceeds to research that will someday cure complex heart defects in children. One out of every 100 children born worldwide have some form of CHD. Most of those children will have a successful palliation and live healthy and everyday lives. However, 25% of those born with CHD are born with a Complex CHD, for the small percentage of children with diagnoses such as Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), Double Outlet Right Ventricle, Tricuspid Atresia, Tetralogy of Fallot, Coarctation of the Aorta, Transposition of the Great Arteries, Pulmonary Atresia, and Truncus Arteriosus, surgical intervention is required very soon after birth. Infants born with Complex CHDs require at least one and sometimes several open heart surgeries and/or heart transplantation to survive. Despite advances in medicine and the life-saving surgeries that now allow these children a chance at life, 50% of children born with Complex CHD won't live to see their fifth birthday. In the United States, CHD is 60 times more prevalent than childhood cancer. Twice as many children die from CHD each year than from all forms of childhood cancer combined, yet funding for pediatric cancer research is five times higher than funding for CHD. In fact, of every dollar the government spends on medical funding, only a fraction of a penny is directed to CHD research. Even with this small contribution, CHD deaths have declined over the last decade due to advances made through research. There is currently no cure for any of the 40 different types of CHD, but imagine the possibilities if more funding went to this research. Building the Cure Foundation wants to raise the bar and create a larger awareness around CHD, increase funding for this life-saving research, and emphasize the importance of finding a CURE!

Several groups are attempting to use stem cells to build entirely new hearts! Researchers are on the edge of cracking the code to regenerate the human body. And we find ourselves in the unique position of being able to fund their research through this foundation DIRECTLY. Our introduction to Dr. Doris Taylor's research inspired the creation of this foundation. Her incredibly talented team has worked tirelessly for many years and is currently engaged in research that will change the face of this earth and save millions of lives! Dr. Doris Taylor

Driven by her vision of what is possible for the future, Dr. Doris Taylor has discovered a way to build a human heart using a patient’s stem cells. She has devised a complex process of decellularizing, or removing all the living cells, from the “matrix” or “scaffold” of the heart and re-injecting a person's stem cells back into the heart. The result is a personalized heart for the recipient! The decellularized heart, or Ghost Heart, results from many trials and is the answer to how we grow a new heart with stem cells.

Therefore, for this research, the team uses pig hearts to create living beating hearts that will someday be ready for transplant. The fact that these hearts are built using a patient's stem cells is the key to the lasting effect of such technology. Heart transplants already exist. However, the quality of life after a heart transplant is highly compromised due to the necessity for immuno-suppressant drugs to prevent organ rejection. When a heart is built with the patient's cells, the rejection problem is eliminated. Thus, the transplant recipient can lead a healthy and everyday life without the complication of a compromised immune system. Also, a current transplant may have a lifespan of around ten years because of the constant attack of the immune system on the organ; the stem cell heart has the potential to last many decades, just as the person's original heart would. The genius of this technology is that it can be performed on any part of the body that receives a blood supply. For example, this technique can create new livers, lungs, kidneys, intestinal tracts, bones, muscles, and almost anything in the body. The brilliant minds behind this research will change the landscape of the future and the lives of millions. This will eventually eliminate the organ transplant list. Currently, thousands of people die every year waiting for an organ transplant, and this technology has the potential to save those lives. This will change the way we all think of growing old, ultimately, solving the problem of decay, being able to build human organs, will someday be possible because of this incredible research. It is our intention, as the Building The Cure Foundation, to donate all proceeds to this research and further the development they have already begun.

My daughter, Katerina, was born on July 30, 2018, and we thought she was a healthy baby. At two days old, it was discovered that she had not just a minor heart problem but was missing half her heart. Doctors explained that she never developed the left side of her heart in utero and that she would need to have surgery immediately. After spending a week in the NICU regaining her strength (she was near death when they discovered her condition), she had surgery at eight days old. She would continue to have two additional open heart surgeries in her first year of life and spend more than six months in the PICU. During this time of total and complete uncertainty, sadness, and despair, I happened upon the research of Dr. Doris Taylor, who was formerly running a team in the regenerative medicine department of the Texas Heart Institute. For the first time in months, I felt there would be hope for Katerina, a child born with HLHS, a type of CHD for which there is no cure. The brilliant Dr. Taylor I discovered was building human hearts using stem cells. This means that not only could a heart be custom-built for my child using her own stem cells, but her body would not reject this heart. In traditional heart transplants, a patient has to be on immune-suppressant drugs for the rest of their life to prevent the body from attacking the new heart with a Bio-Identical heart. That would no longer be the case. A person with a heart built using their stem cells may have a completely new lease on life without the extreme side effects of anti-rejection medication. I had the great pleasure of visiting Dr. Taylor in early 2020 and was amazed by the potential of what is possible because of her revolutionary research. I was honored to meet such a visionary person who has dedicated much of her life to finding a cure for people needing organ transplants. Dr. Taylor has left Texas to pursue making hearts a reality. She is now working with engineers, process development teams, and regulatory consultants to move building hearts into a true manufacturing endeavor. Putting us all one step closer to a CURE! See the link below to hear Dr. Taylor on CNN Life Itself: