Although she has never climbed a mountain higher than 4,000 feet, next summer 50-year-old Valerie S. McDyer plans to trek 19,500 feet up Mt. Kilimanjaro to fundraise for the Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair (HCNR).

HCNR is a non-profit organization that supports research of diseases that impair normal brain function, like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis.

“My mother has Alzheimer’s, and she lives in a nursing home in Ireland,” says McDyer, whose unique fundraising career began three years ago with a walk for breast cancer research and has since taken her to South Africa. “I thought I’d do it for her.”

McDyer’s experience highlights the Harvard-based center’s purpose, says Adrian J. Ivinson, the director of HCNR.

“So many of us have some connection to neurodegenerative diseases,” he says. “They are so prevalent in society, so it’s not unusual that interest comes about.”

Funding Research

Although interest in HCNR’s research is widespread, Ivinson says the center has never actively solicited donations like McDyer’s.

“In that respect it was lucky, because a Harvard-based center doesn’t have a precedent for this fundraising. We are surprised and delighted,” Ivinson says.

At present, HCNR has a sufficient operating budget, Ivinson says, but the vast majority of its funds originate from a single anonymous donor who gave $37.5 million to jumpstart the organization in 2001.

“We are absolutely resource-limited,” Ivinson says. “We have no shortage of ideas, and there are many new programs we could start if we had the funds. We’re impatient for progress that will make a difference for friends and family.”

The funds that HCNR will gain from McDyer’s climb are not only helpful for their programs, but essential for the future of biomedical research in neuroscience.

“The number of Alzheimer’s patients will double in the next 50 years,” Ivinson says. “It speaks to the urgency that is driving the center forward.”

While searching online for an organization that raised money for research on Alzheimer’s disease, McDyer came across the center.

She says she particularly liked the center’s approach of working with seven Boston hospitals to research neurodegenerative disease.

“I liked the collaboration of science from various hospitals. It’s totally new the way they collaborate with different groups and share information,” McDyer says. “They produce quicker than organizations on just one track.”