The Progeria Research Foundation

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Night of Wonder 2003: Under the Big Top
It was Truly THE GREATEST PARTY ON EARTH!

Raising an astonishing $145,000 with the help of celebrities Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson, and held just days after the gene announcement, the Night of Wonder 2003 was the event of the year! Hundreds of people and businesses made the evening’s success possible, including Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson, the event committee, in-kind donors, auction item donors, advertisers, volunteers, attendees, Board of Directors and those that couldn’t attend but made a donation. THANK YOU ALL!

A guest "clowns around" just before the live auction begins.

Event Committee members Stacey, Marni,
and Kim with PRF Medical Director Leslie Gordon

"The human gene is almost 3 billion letters of our DNA code that you have in each cell of your body. If you printed these letters out on pages, piled them on top of each other, that would be the height of the Washington Monument. We had to find one letter, out of those 3 billion that was misspelled. That was the task. Without The Progeria Research Foundation to support that, without the consortium that (PRF Medical Director) Leslie put together where we could all brainstorm together, and without the willingness of those scientists to tackle an almost unsolvable puzzle, this never would have happened."
- Dr. Francis Collins, Director of The National Human Genome Research Institute and co-discoverer of the Progeria gene.

Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen “clown around” during their moving speech just before the live auction.	Debbie Ponn and Robyn Milbury are standing tall with these balloon hats
Bob Griffin gets in the spirit of the circus theme!	Francis Collins gets a standing ovation for his work on the Progeria gene discovery