Muscular Dystrophy Association Launches New Venture Philanthropy

"We're excited about MVP because it will help us to overcome the critical funding gap that can occur in research on promising new drugs and therapies," said MDA President & CEO Gerald C. Weinberg.

MVP's venture capital model addresses the well-known drug development challenge in which promising work on ideas for new drug therapies, development of which can take many years and cost more than $1 billion to bring to fruition, can run out of money and be abandoned. The funding problem is worsened when the drug or the therapy is being developed for a disease that affects a relatively small patient population base, with a relatively small return on investment. MVP overcomes these problems by joining the entrepreneurial spirit of donors with best business practices to drive a specific therapeutic development.