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Updates from Research Administration
- Advancing Translational Science Through the NUCATS-Manne Research Institute Collaboration
Research Staff Additions and Career News
News from the Manne Research Institute Pillars
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Awards $2 Million to Improve Healthcare at Home for Children
- Promising Gene-Based Approaches to Repair Lethal Lung Injury in the Elderly from COVID-19, Pneumonia, Flu, Sepsis
- Genetic Biomarker May Predict Severity of Food Allergy
- Lurie Children’s Hospital Performs Innovative Minimally Invasive Surgery for Severe Muscle Tone in Cerebral Palsy
Manne Research Institute in the Media
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UPDATES FROM RESEARCH ADMINISTRATION | |
Office of the President and Chief Research Officer | | |
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Advancing Translational Science Through the NUCATS-Manne Research Institute Collaboration
Manne Research Institute's latest President's Message from Dr. Patrick Seed
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Our collaborative partnership with Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine serves as a cornerstone for both interdisciplinary research and advanced pediatric medicine. As full-time faculty members of Feinberg School, our investigators are privileged to have access to an array of cutting-edge research resources. Among these is the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute, which is generously funded by a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) grant from the National Institutes of Health. The CTSA program aims to accelerate the translation of laboratory discoveries into improved patient outcomes, and our engagement brings a critical pediatric lens to this initiative. In the latest President’s Message, President and Chief Research Officer Patrick Seed, MD, PhD, explains how the partnership is strengthening the translational science landscape through the perspectives of Drs. Todd Florin and Richard D'Aquila.
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Research Institute Staff Additions and Career News | | |
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Stella Karuri, PhD
Associate Director for Biostatistics, Quantitative Science
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 |  | Stella Karuri, PhD, has been promoted to Associate Director for Biostatistics for the Quantitative Science pillar. In this role, Stella will partner with statistical stakeholders across the institution on cutting-edge bio-behavioral health and epidemiological data; develop collaborative relationships within and outside Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute; and manage statistical analysts, masters-level and PhD-level statisticians, and students. Stella will also manage the implementation of statistical protocols, develop strategic goals, and provide support for the growing statistical needs across the four pillars of the research institute through collaboration with Quantitative Science scientific directors and operations. Stella joined Lurie Children’s as Lead Statistician for the Quantitative Science pillar in August 2022. She has more than 16 years of experience in statistics, including clinical trial design and data analyses, experiment design, and Bayesian analysis. Prior to joining Lurie Children’s, she worked for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a mathematical statistician. She earned her PhD in Statistics from the University of Waterloo in 2005.
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Malavika (Mala) Radhakrishnan, MS
Communications Specialist, Office of Research Development
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The Office of Research Development welcomes Malavika (Mala) Radhakrishnan, MS, to the team as Communications Specialist. In her new role, Mala will use her professional experience designing and evaluating health messages and narrative persuasions to support Manne Research Institute newsletters and communication channels. Prior to joining Lurie Children’s, Mala worked as an Infodemiologist Researcher with Critica, Inc., where she focused on infodemic management by incorporating socio-behavioral research, data analysis, community engagement, and motivational interviewing. She also has extensive experience in IRB protocol construction, review board collaboration, and research portfolio management through her role as a Communications Researcher with Weill Cornell Medical College. She was a research intern with the Center of Media Psychology and Social Influence lab at Northwestern University. She earned an MS in Health Communications from Northwestern University.
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Briana Rodriguez, MS
Operations Manager, Office of Chief Operating Officer
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Briana Rodriguez, MS, has been promoted to Operations Manager for the Office of the Chief Operating Officer. Briana will oversee the operational aspects of Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute, including building access, employee lifecycle management (onboarding/offboarding), and coordination of department- and enterprise-wide events and activities. They will also work closely with and supervise a senior administrative assistant and an administrative assistant. As a priority project, Briana will collaborate with the Operations Manager of the Quantitative Science pillar to update and enhance existing operating policies and redesign the onboarding and offboarding process for Manne Research Institute as well as operationalize and socialize the new process. Briana earned an MS in Health Communications from Northwestern University and a BA in English (Professional and Technical Writing) and a BA in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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NEWS FROM THE RESEARCH PILLARS | |
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Awards $2 Million to Improve Healthcare at Home for Children | |
A research team led by Carolyn Foster, MD, MS, Attending Physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and Nicole Werner, PhD, Associate Professor at Indiana University Bloomington, has received a $2 million grant award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to fund the study, “The SafeCare@Home4Kids Learning Lab: Designing Safer Healthcare at Home for Children.”
Children with medical complexity are an increasing population of medically fragile patients with disability who require substantial amounts of care. Families of these children are faced with providing increasingly more medical care at home, including safely administering intricate medication regimens through implanted devices, such as a tube inserted into the stomach. While it is known that medication errors or device-related adverse events are occurring at home, the healthcare system does not currently provide ways to identify and reduce these healthcare safety threats.
This research will bring together experts in patient safety, human factors engineering, nursing, pediatrics, home healthcare, informatics, and lived family experience for a collaborative Patient Safety Learning Lab called “SafeCare@Home4Kids” to design innovative, effective, and equitable approaches to prevent medication errors or device-related adverse events experienced by diverse children at home. The research team includes collaboration with clinician-researchers at Northwestern University’s Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research and Boston Children’s Hospital, as well partnership with the University of Illinois Chicago’s Division of Specialized Care for Children, Team Select Home Care, Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs National Research Network, and Almost Home Kids (Almost Home Kids is affiliated with Lurie Children’s). National pediatric nursing and home health care experts as well as patient family advocates representing diverse communities will also be involved in research design and dissemination.
Together, this group will work to better understand how family caregivers and home nurses currently identify, communicate, and prevent healthcare safety errors and adverse events at home. Additionally, they will use input from families, home nurses, prescribing providers, and safety experts to co-design, implement, and evaluate a digital safety toolkit that addresses these healthcare safety events to improve patient safety at home. The project period is from September 30, 2023, to July 31, 2027.
SafeCare@Home4Kids represents a major shift in safety research toward focusing on the home as a fundamental healthcare practice setting for children and serving populations who may not otherwise be empowered or supported to address the safety of their children’s healthcare. “By combining health services research and human factors engineering with patient-family partnership, I believe we can meaningfully impact healthcare no matter where a child calls home,” said Dr. Foster, who is the principal investigator of the Foster Health Lab.
Pediatric research at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago is conducted through Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute.
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Promising Gene-Based Approaches to Repair Lethal Lung Injury in the Elderly from COVID-19, Pneumonia, Flu, Sepsis | |
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Discovery from the lab of Youyang Zhao, PhD, from Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago offers promising treatment approaches for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in the elderly that can be caused by severe COVID-19, pneumonia, flu or sepsis. Currently there are no pharmacological or cell-based treatments for ARDS.
Dr. Zhao’s research established that a gene called FOXM1 is important in the repair of blood vessel through regeneration of endothelial cells, which line the vessels of the lung. He found that aging impairs this gene’s expression, which may be responsible for the high fatality rate from ARDS in people over 75 years of age – 10 times higher compared to young adults.
Working with a mouse model, Dr. Zhao also demonstrated that FOXM1 expression could be reactivated by two methods, which restore the gene’s function and improve survival from ARDS in the aged mice. As seen in aged mice, FOXM1 expression was inhibited in elderly COVID-19 patients. His findings were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
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Genetic Biomarker May Predict Severity of Food Allergy
Offers potential for determining the risk of severe reactions for patients and families with food allergies
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Researchers from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and colleagues reported for the first time that a genetic biomarker may be able to help predict the severity of food allergy reactions. Currently there is no reliable or readily available clinical biomarker that accurately distinguishes patients with food allergies who are at risk for severe life-threatening reactions versus more mild symptoms. Findings were published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Dr. Lang and colleagues found that the presence of an enzyme isoform called α-tryptase, which is encoded by the TPSAB1 gene, correlates with increased prevalence of anaphylaxis or severe reaction to food as compared to subjects without any α-tryptase.
“Determining whether or not a patient with food allergies has α-tryptase can easily be done in clinical practice using a commercially available test to perform genetic sequencing from cheek swabs,” said lead author Abigail Lang, MD, MSc, attending physician and researcher at Lurie Children’s and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “If the biomarker is detected, this may help us understand that the child is at a higher risk for a severe reaction or anaphylaxis from their food allergy and should use their epinephrine auto-injector if exposed to the allergen. Our findings also open the door to developing an entirely new treatment strategy for food allergies that would target or block α-tryptase. This is an exciting first step and more research is needed.”
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Lurie Children’s Hospital Performs Innovative Minimally Invasive Surgery for Severe Muscle Tone in Cerebral Palsy
Computer-guided radiofrequency ablation used for the first time to decrease muscle tone in a child with hypertonia
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Computer-guided radiofrequency ablation used for the first time to decrease muscle tone in a child with hypertonia
Jeffrey Raskin, MS, MD, a neurosurgeon at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, performed the first ever computer-guided radiofrequency ablation to decrease excessive muscle tone (called hypertonia) in a child with cerebral palsy.
In hypertonia, muscles are constantly activated, which causes severe pain and deformity in the bones and joints, and profoundly impacts the child’s quality of life. Medications are not always effective, and these patients do not have any other surgical options.
Dr. Raskin’s innovative minimally invasive surgical procedure uses a computer system to accurately place electrode needles into the nerve roots that exit the spine. Radiofrequency energy (similar to microwave heat) is then delivered to disconnect the muscle from the brain and spinal cord, which effectively decreases the ability of the nervous system to activate muscles.
While radiofrequency ablation has been used for decades for relieving pain, the procedure has not been attempted previously for decreasing tone in cerebral palsy.
Dr. Raskin reported his experience with the first patient case in the journal Operative Neurosurgery. Now eight months after the procedure, the benefits are lasting, and the child’s quality of life is greatly improved.
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MANNE RESEARCH INSTITUTE IN THE MEDIA | | | | |
