The promise of personalized, preventive and predictive medicine for children is becoming a reality at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. As clinical, research and computational expertise converge, we're excited about changing the outcome for children here and around the world. Personalized, predictive medicine is a lifelong, individually tailored health care approach to detecting, preventing and treating disease based on knowledge of an individual's precise genetic, biologic, environmental and clinical profile. Although this revolutionary approach was applied early to adult health care, its potential to improve child health is just coming into its own.
At Cincinnati Children's, we are capitalizing on advances in genomic, proteomic and biomarker technologies, environmental health sciences and computational medicine to improve diagnoses, personalize therapies, predict outcomes and prevent disease. Strong multidisciplinary teams provide the wide variety of expertise required for success. I invite you to read more about these groundbreaking projects in this issue.
The Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation continues to rank among the top three comprehensive pediatric centers receiving National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants. We are the largest pediatric research program in the Midwest, conducting both basic and clinical research in nearly 600,000 square feet of state-of-the-art laboratory and office space. In 2007, we will open our newest research and office facility with an additional 415,000 square feet to house our expanding academic programs.
In fiscal year 2005, our sponsored program awards climbed to a record $124 million, up nearly 9 percent over last fiscal year. Nearly $90 million came from the NIH. To advance our capabilities in personalized and predictive medicine, we continue to develop the Computational Medicine Center with a $28 million grant from Ohio's Third Frontier Project.
As of June 30, 2005, our faculty numbered 405, including 379 with full-time, primary appointments in the Department of Pediatrics, an increase of 36 over last fiscal year. Many of the 52 faculty in the Cincinnati Children's Department of Surgical Services, 37 in the Department of Anesthesia and 38 in the Department of Radiology and Medical Imaging also participated in Research Foundation activities. Our new graduate program in immunobiology recruited its second class, and 12 students entered the Molecular and Developmental Biology Graduate Program.
Please take this opportunity to learn more about how Cincinnati Children's is changing the outcome for families around the world. In-depth information on our research programs is available on CD-ROM. We welcome your interest.
Sincerely,
Thomas F. Boat, MD
Chair, Department of Pediatrics
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Director, Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation
