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From the Directors
Mark Batshaw, MD
Chief Academic Officer, CRI |
The 2007–2008 academic years are marked by both challenges and rewarding experiences for Children’s Research Institute (CRI) and the academic programs at Children’s National Medical Center. Children’s Research Institute achievements include new recruitments and the addition of new research space, demonstrating strong institution-wide support to fulfill our academic mission. Children’s Research Institute faced challenges similar to those of all academic health centers—limited National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and the impact of the external economic environment. However, we are well on our way to defining a new era in pediatric research.
Our grant portfolio includes seven large infrastructure awards from the NIH that support our research mission. This past year the Washington-Baltimore Center to Improve Child Health Disparities, led by Principal Investigator Denice Cora-Bramble, MD, MBA, came up for competitive renewal. In collaboration with Howard University, we successfully obtained funding for five more years. This means that we have continued to successfully renew each of our major NIH center grants, demonstrating strong productivity in team science. We are currently working on a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) application to NIH in collaboration with the George Washington University, our academic affiliate, for submission in October 2008. This would expand our currently funded General Clinical Research Center, and, if successful, would represent the first CTSA led by a children’s hospital.
Mendel Tuchman, MD
Scientific Director, CRI |
CRI places a special emphasis on integration to provide cohesive research and clinical programs. As an initial step Children’s National has established five institutes that reflect excellence in clinical care, research, education, and advocacy. These include Children’s National Heart Institute, the Obesity Institute, the Neurofibromatosis Institute, the Brain Tumor Institute, and the Urea Cycle Disorders (UCD) Institute.
We also are planning to launch a Surgical Innovation Research Institute. Our institutes would not be possible if not for the strong philanthropic support we receive. CRI and Children’s National have had success this past year recruiting senior investigators and research intensive clinicians. We recruited four senior scientists, who will help us achieve our goal of taking CRI to new levels of academic achievement:
- Pedro Jose, MD, PhD, from Georgetown University, is a pediatric nephrologist who studies the genetics of hypertension and dopamine receptor function and holds a prestigious MERIT award from NIH. Dr. Jose will direct a new Center for Molecular Physiology Research.
- Avital Cnaan, PhD, from the University of Pennsylvania, is a renowned biostatistician and an expert in multi-center clinical trials. Dr. Cnaan will direct a section of Clinical Trials Coordination within the Center for Clinical and Community Research.
- Edward Connor, MD, former Chief Medical Officer at MedImmune, is the director of a new Office of Investigational Therapeutics. This office oversees industry trials and intellectual property.
- Pamela Hinds, RN, PhD, from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, is an internationally known behavioral science investigator in end-of-life care who will direct Nursing Research, working within the Center for Clinical and Community Research.
Additionally, with the recruitment of four new clinical division chiefs who have a research focus, approximately half of our clinical chiefs are research intensive, as compared to less than a quarter only five years ago.
- Terry Fry, MD, from the National Institutes of Health intramural program, is chief of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. Fry explores the use of vaccines and adoptive cellular therapies targeting tumors to diminish the risk of relapse following stem cell transplantation for cancer.
- D. Ashley Hill, MD, from Washington University, is chief of Pathology. Her research focuses on the genetics of a rare childhood lung cancer.
- Richard Levy, MD, from New York Medical College, is associate chief of Anesthesiology and medical director of Cardiac Anesthesiology. He studies mitochondrial biogenesis in critical care.
- Randall Burd, MD, from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, is chief of the division of Trauma and Burn Services. He performs health services research in surgical care.
Additionally, we were able to retain our most well-known scientist, Eric Hoffman, PhD, director of the Center for Genetic Medicine Research, who was offered tremendous opportunities elsewhere but chose to remain and expand his outstanding work in genetic research at Children’s National. This year we made significant investments in the infrastructure of research finance, a complex issue in a rapidly expanding research enterprise, culminating in the recruitment of a superb director of finance, Carmen Mendez, MBA. In August 2008, CRI opened a new floor of research space in the hospital complex. This increases our research capacity by 30 percent and allows for the expansion of each of our existing centers and permits the creation of a new Center of Molecular Physiology. In addition, we expanded our General Clinical Research Center, doubling its space in preparation for the CTSA grant application. This year's challenges and accomplishments have enabled CRI to continue groundbreaking pediatric research and to provide answers to the questions that were once unknown for various childhood diseases. Feeling poised and confident entering into the next decade, CRI will continue to define an era in pediatric research.
Sincerely,
Mark L. Batshaw, MD
Chief Academic Officer, Children’s National Medical Center
Mendel Tuchman, MD
Scientific Director, Children's Research Institute
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