Fifth Third Bank, Arthritis Foundation Help Fund Groundbreaking Arthritis Research at Children's
CINCINNATI -- Enabled by a $1 million grant from the Fifth Third Bank, researchers at Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati today announced the largest and most comprehensive effort ever undertaken to identify the role of genes in children with arthritis.
The Fifth Third Bank grant comes through the Arthritis Foundation, Ohio River Valley Chapter, of the Arthritis Foundation, which has raised an additional $200,000 for rheumatology research. The $1.2 million has been matched by The Wasie Foundation of Minneapolis. The total of $2.4 million in grants will allow researchers "to understand the causes of arthritis in children and identify many potential routes for new therapies," says David Glass, M.D., director of Rheumatology at Cincinnati Children's.
The grants will be applied to research using gene chips. These chips will be used to identify "markers" that are associated with genes linked to musculoskeletal disease. With this research, gene chips will be used for the first time to identify children and adolescents at risk of musculoskeletal disease and, in those individuals who already have been diagnosed, to determine which medications will work best given their particular genetic makeup:
Disease Identification, Diagnosis and Prognosis
Pediatric musculoskeletal disease is not caused by a single gene but by multiple genes that confer a certain level of risk of developing disease in each child. Gene chips will allow researchers to identify children and adolescent who have these so-called "susceptibility" genes. The chips will spot genetic markers associated with these genes. The markers will, in turn, tell whether these genes are present in an individual.
Gene chips contain chemical receptors that sit on arrays implanted on the chips. To determine susceptibility to disease in the future, a blood sample will be taken and placed on the chip. Receptors will grab the markers in the blood, and peptides on the chip will react to the markers. The markers will "glow" or otherwise indicate if they're present. Early identification of children at risk will allow physicians to monitor them more closely for onset of signs of disease. Among children with signs and symptoms, gene chips will allow the diagnosis to be made with more certainty and disease progression to be monitored more closely.
Gene chips will do more than help identify and diagnose disease. They will also help determine how well an individual will respond to a particular therapy. Not all children and adolescents with musculoskeletal disease respond the same way to medication. To determine how they will respond, a blood sample will be placed on the chip. If markers in the blood associated with a favorable response to a therapy are present, physicians will be able to prescribe treatment with confidence that the individual will respond favorably to it.
Discoveries made possible through the grants will enable Cincinnati Children's researchers to focus on the 50 to 100 genes that are believed to be involved in juvenile arthritis. Once these genes are identified, they can be the focus of NIH grants (which do not fund the initial discovery phase of projects of this magnitude) and partnerships with the biotechnology industry to test strategies to inhibit these genes to suppress disease.
"We are now at a point in time scientifically when major new technologies can be brought to bear on childhood diseases, and this project is an excellent example of how we should take advantage of this technology to improve the outcome of arthritis for the thousands of children who suffer from this condition," says Thomas Boat, M.D., director of The Children's Hospital Research Foundation. "I view this as an extraordinary opportunity to do in a five-year period what a few years ago would have been seen as a 20 year effort."
The prevalence of childhood rheumatic diseases, including juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and dermatomyositis, is nearly double the prevalence of cerebral palsy or juvenile diabetes. The word "arthritis" refers to inflammation (swelling,heat and pain) involving joints. Arthritis is a chronic condition that can last for years. When it occurs at age 16 or younger, it is called juvenile arthritis. There are many different types of juvenile arthritis, and there a number of related musculoskeletal conditions that are not technically arthritis but have similar symptoms and treatments.
The onset of juvenile arthritis and related diseases is different from the adult form and can range from being milder to more severe. Some children with juvenile arthritis also get a sight-threatening eye disease; others eventually require surgical joint replacement.
At least 30 percent of children have a disability that persists as they transition from school through college and into the workplace. About 13,750 children in the areas served by the Arthritis Foundation, Ohio River Valley Chapter, have some form of juvenile arthritis.
"On behalf of Fifth Third and the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust, for which we serve as Trustee, we are honored to partner with the Arthritis Foundation and Children's Hospital Medical Center to bestow this $1 million grant," says George A. Schaefer, Jr., president & CEO, Fifth Third Bank. "The William S. Rowe division of Rheumatology is on the cusp of unlocking the mysteries of juvenile arthritis. We salute his groundbreaking research in this human genome project, which seeks to identify the genes involved in this debilitating disorder.
"We are proud of our long-standing tradition of support to these organizations because of the care and research they provide for our youth," adds Schaefer. "In 1962, Cincinnati became one of the first areas in the country to open a pediatric rheumatology program with the Special Treatment Center for Juvenile Arthritis (STC) at Children's Hospital, which now acts as the clinical arm of the William S. Rowe division of Rheumatology. William S. Rowe led Fifth Third as president and chairman from 1963-1985. Cincinnati is fortunate to have CHMC and the Arthritis Foundation, Ohio River Valley Chapter, in such a close collaboration working to find the causes and cure of these chronic, painful and crippling diseases."
The division of Rheumatology is considered to be the top juvenile arthritis research center in the United States and perhaps the world. Its level of research expertise directed at pediatric rheumatic diseases "is not duplicated or even approached by any other institution in the world," according to a representative from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Since 1987, the faculty has increased from two to 11, and research dollars have increased from $150,000 to $2.5 million annually. The successes of the division would not have been possible without a gift some 13 years ago from the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust. This gift has been leveraged through the award of numerous external grants from both the federal government and the Arthritis Foundation. This includes, in 1996, a five-year, $4 million grant from the NIH to promote better care and treatment for patients with arthritis or other musculoskeletal disorders. With this grant, Children's became the first pediatric institution in the nation to be named a Multipurpose Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Disease Center (MAMDC) by the NIH.
Earlier this year, Cincinnati Children's established a new Rheumatic Diseases Research Core Center, one of only two core centers established nationwide with support from the NIH. The core center will concentrate on understanding the causes of pediatric rheumatic diseases and finding novel approaches for treating them.
In 1999, a clinical trials unit was established within the division to facilitate therapeutic trials in pediatric rheumatic illness. Also within the division is the headquarters of the Pediatric Rheumatology Collaborative Study Group (PRCSG), a clinical trials group that involves 60 centers throughout the United States and Canada.
Out of the PRCSG came a study in 2000 showing that nearly 75 percent of children with severe, longstanding JRA respond, often dramatically, to ENBRELâ (etanercept), a new drug. The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, was led by Cincinnati Children's researchers.
The division also houses a patient registry to aid research for rare diseases. With a five-year grant from the NIH, Cincinnati Children's established a list of children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA). This list focuses on families in which two or more siblings are affected by JRA. Research on JRA and other diseases is often hampered by difficulty in finding enough patients with the disorder.
The division also includes the Special Treatment Center for Juvenile Arthritis, the patient-care arm of the division that provides care for more than 800 children with pediatric rheumatic disease.
Founded in 1948, the Arthritis Foundation is the only national voluntary health associated dedicated to finding the causes, prevention and cures for the more than 100 forms of arthritis. The Foundation also works to increase public understanding of arthritis, to provide continuing education for arthritis health professionals, and to provide patient services and self-help programs for people with arthritis. A primary function of the Arthritis Foundation is to fund top quality research aimed at finding causing of arthritis, ways to prevent and cure rheumatic diseases and better methods to treat the many different kinds of arthritis.
The Ohio River Valley Chapter was founded in 1956 and offers services to more than 450,000 men, women and children who have arthritis in its service area, which includes 25 counties in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky and 45 counties in West Virginia.
The Wasie Foundation was established in 1966 by Stanley Wasie, a Minneapolis trucking pioneer. Since it began, The Wasie Foundation has given tens of millions of dollars in grants to the family's interest areas, including arthritis and childhood disabilities.
Contact Information
Jim Feuer, (
jfeuer@cchmc.org), 513-636-4656
