Nollywood icon, Julie Andrews is fighting Huntington’s disease.

She has served on the board of trustees of the Hereditary Disease Foundation with her current husband, film director Blake Edwards, for over 30 years.

The HDF funds cutting-edge research and is committed to finding treatments and cures for Huntington’s disease and other hereditary illnesses.

Andrews was first approached to serve as a board member by Milton Wexler, Ph.D., the chairman and founder of the Foundation, and his daughter, Nancy S. Wexler, Ph.D., who became the Foundation’s President in 1983.

Milton, who died on March 16 at 98, created the HDF in 1968 after learning that his wife, Leonore Wexler, had Huntington’s disease. Leonore died from complications of Huntington’s in 1978.

This is a devastating inherited condition that often waits until mid-life to strike,” Andrews says.

“Huntington’s is also a ‘marker disease,’ which means that if a cure is found, researchers will also gain insight on how to cure hereditary forms of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, other genetic diseases—even cancer.”

In her work with the Hereditary Disease Foundation, Andrews has found that many people are still unfamiliar with this fatal neurological illness that causes involuntary movements, severe emotional disturbance, and cognitive decline.

Huntington’s disease usually strikes people in their thirties and forties, although it can also attack children and the elderly. There is no treatment yet to halt the inexorable progression of Huntington’s, which leads to death after 10 to 25 years.