Even though they aren’t self-lacing and don’t come with a hoverboard, the limited-production Nike Mags – Marty McFly’s fly shoes from the 1989 movie Back to the Future II – are still flying off the shelves as part of the company’s effort to raise money for Parkinson’s disease research.
Since September 8th Nike began auctioning off 150 of the shoes a day on eBay with the money going to The Michael J. Fox Foundation. The sale ends on September 18th.
23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki and her husband Google co-founder Sergey Brin will match all donations to the foundation, up to $50 million, through the end of 2012.
Fox, who played McFly in the three Back to the Future movies, said the campaign has brought together three passionate audiences – the Parkinson’s community, “sneakerheads,” and fans of the movies.
“With their support we can accelerate our objective of finding a cure for Parkinson’s,” Fox said.
For more than two years 23andMe has worked with the Michael J. Fox Foundation, as well as other Parkinson’s groups to enroll 10,000 patients into our Parkinson’s Research Community. We’re more than half way there already and we’ve already made some important breakthroughs finding two new genetic associations with the diseases and confirming 20 previously identified associations.
Even with the progress we’ve made so far, we still need to enroll another 4,200 people to reach our goal. If you, or someone you know has Parkinson’s and is willing to participate in this exciting new research revolution please consider signing up.