Ashley Slaughter & Courtney Sutcliffe

Ashley Slaughter

We live in Gippsland in Victoria, Australia, and our youngest daughter Lexi was born with KRT10 EI.

The El Cure Project is important to us for several reasons. For Lexi’s whole life all we have been able to do is try to make her more comfortable, and adapt our lives to help manage the various difficulties that EI causes in everyday life. We are keen that an answer to our daughter’s struggles can be found, so that she can lead a life without all the worries and adaptations that we encounter daily. When we learned that advances in gene editing technology meant that a cure might be possible, it gave us so much hope. Although EI is not widely known, there are so many people around the world that would benefit from this research, not only for EI, but for other conditions that might need gene editing too. Research into any form of gene editing will benefit more families than only those affected with EI. So, as soon as I learned about the EI Cure Project, I simply had to be involved, for my daughter, and for every other wonderful family that we’ve met in our journey so far, I hope that together we can achieve our goal.

Courtney Sutcliffe

My son was born with KRT10 EI in 2010 along with his twin sister, who was unaffected by EI. Prior to their birth, I had never heard of EI, and it was quite a shock.  My children live a full and busy life, but EI impacts every aspect of it and affects every decision we make as a family.

To us, the EI Cure Project represents the first time we have real hope of an eventual cure. EI is such a rare condition which means funding and research for EI is extremely limited, but with the EI Cure Project having a research team dedicated specifically to EI, we all hope that a cure is something that we can turn into reality for my son and others of all ages.