Hearts with Hope - Saving Children

Gil Seton, a manager at SP Investment Fund LLC, a company that invests in real estate and technology with an eye toward its social impact, resides in Los Angeles. When away from work, Gil Seton has a variety of charitable interests and has engaged with many nonprofit organizations such as Operation Smile, Women’s HIV Program of the University of California at San Francisco, and Hearts with Hope.

The Hearts with Hope Foundation is a nonprofit that provides medical and dental care along with humanitarian assistance to children with heart disease in underserved communities around the globe. Founded in 2005, Hearts with Hope helps children with congenital heart disease in a variety of ways. The foundation helps individuals without the resources to care for themselves, as well as educates healthcare professionals in the disadvantaged communities the children reside in.

The foundation provides life-saving pediatric surgery to children in developing countries, and also trains local doctors on how to perform these procedures. Without Hearts with Hope, the children they serve would not have access to these critical life-saving surgeries.

HepaTx Develops Effective Alternative

A real estate investment professional with more than three decades of experience in affordable housing, Gil Seton serves as a manager of SP Investment Fund, LLC, a Los Angeles, California-based investment firm. As the manager of the firm, Gil Seton oversees the investments of SP and its affiliates in affordable housing developments and emerging technology and biotechnology startups that will benefit society, such as HepaTx.

A regenerative medicine technology pioneer, HepaTx is working on a cutting-edge therapy for liver diseases that rely on stem cells. With this therapy, patients with late-stage liver disease can avoid liver transplants. In the United States, over 30 million individuals are diagnosed with liver disease and live less comfortably. Each year, about 7 percent of the affected population develop end-stage liver failure, which necessitates transplant for the patients' survival.

A liver transplant is not available to all patients. Approximately, only 3 percent of patients in need of the surgery have access to the treatment. As this is a matter of life and death, finding promising alternatives is critical. HepaTx's solution replaces the lost regenerative capacity of a defective liver. With this, the liver may recover its vitality and become a healthy organ again.