Digestive Health Center

Mission and Goals

The overall goal of our Digestive Health Center, is to promote research that will yield insights into the fundamental processes and pathogenic mechanisms of digestive disease in children and generate innovative treatment to restore digestive health.  Specifically, our long-term goals are to improve child health through better diagnosis, treatments and outcomes for our 4 key targeted focus areas and diseases including:

1. Chronic Liver Disease
   • Biliary atresia and cholestatic liver diseases 
   • Liver transplantation
2. Inflammatory and Diarrheal Diseases
   • Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)
   • Eosinophilic gastrointestinal disorders (EGIDs)
   • Infectious diarrhea
3. Obesity and the Digestive System
   • Overweight
   • Metabolic complications of obesity
4. Development and Digestive Diseases
   • Molecular basis of organogenesis
   • Adult stem cell and homeostasis
   • Intestinal organoids from stem cells

The focus areas are linked by 4 highly innovative Biomedical Research Cores:

• Gene and Protein Expression
• Bioinformatics
• Integrative Morphology
• Clinical Infrastructure to facilitate patient-based research