News in Brief
Funding and awards to Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation have continued to rise over the past decade. This growth is essential to the investments we make each year in our employees, facilities and new technologies. With assistance from increases in grant funding for research in fiscal year 2006, we are committed to continually raising the standard of care for children.
Sponsored Program Awards
Direct and Indirect Costs
This graph represents total grant funding to Cincinnati Children's, including awards from the National Institutes of Health, other government agencies and private foundations.
National Institutes of Health Awards
Direct and Indirect Costs
Sponsored External Funding
Fiscal Year 2006
Cincinnati Children's offers one of the largest pediatric training programs within a single institution in the United States. In fiscal year 2006, we trained:
- 53 predoctoral students in the Molecular and Developmental Biology Graduate Program, including 8 MD/PhD students
- 8 predoctoral students in the Immunobiology Graduate Program
- 149 junior medical students in the pediatric clerkship
- 19 senior medical students in pediatric training
- 183 residents in pediatrics, dentistry, psychology, dermatology and a variety of combined training programs
- 78 residents in surgery (includes general surgery, eye, ENT, plastic surgery, orthopaedics and urology)
- 158 clinical fellows
- 102 research postdoctoral fellows
- 3 Procter Scholars, physicians preparing for biomedical or clinical investigative careers in pediatrics
Extensive Publications
In fiscal year 2006, Cincinnati Children's faculty published:
836 peer-reviewed articles 96 non-peer-reviewed articles 60 sections of books 11 pieces in web, CD-ROM and audio 5 books/reports Cincinnati Children's has received a five-year, $7.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health aimed at improving treatment for allergic diseases of childhood, including asthma, common nasal allergies and food allergies. The grant will help establish an asthma and allergy research center at Cincinnati Children's and will focus on the role of epithelial cells in allergic disorders of childhood.
The research will include the following three projects:
Gurjit Khurana Hershey, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Translational Research in Asthma and Allergy and principle investigator of the grant, will lead a project investigating the role of six epithelial genes that her research group has identified as potential targets involved in childhood asthma and allergic disorders, which affect 40 percent of all children. Marc Rothenberg, MD, PhD, director of the Division of Allergy and Immunology, will investigate overproduction of a molecule known as eotaxin-3, which plays a major role in the body's response to allergens. Marsha Wills-Karp, PhD, director of the Division of Immunobiology, will study the biology of allergy-driven epithelial genes."The public health impact of this study will be significant," says Dr. Khurana Hershey. "Through the results of this study, we will be able to provide information about how epithelial cells drive the development of allergic disease, which epithelial genes are relevant to allergic disorders of childhood and which children are at greater risk for severe allergic diseases."
Child magazine recently named Cincinnati Children's among the top five best children's hospitals in the United States. The medical center also was ranked fourth in neonatal care and fifth in cancer care in the magazine's 10 Best Children's Hospitals survey. The survey results appear in the February 2007 issue of the magazine. "This is particularly gratifying because the ranking is based on comparative analysis of detailed, comprehensive data," says James Anderson, president and CEO. "The outcome is a tribute to the intensive work Cincinnati Children's has done over the last five years to transform health care delivery."
Researchers at Cincinnati Children's have developed the first gene chip to use in the early diagnosis of at least five hereditary liver diseases, to detect genetic causes of jaundice in children and adults, and potentially to lead to personalized treatment options. The chip is nearly 100 percent effective in the detection of the most common mutations in children with inherited causes of jaundice. Says pediatric gastroenterologist Jorge Bezerra, MD, the study's lead investigator, "This is the first chip in the world that has been customized to diagnose genetic mutations in patients with inherited types of liver diseases."
