October 30, 2023 | Office of the President & Chief Research Officer

Stanley Manne Children's Research Institute President's Message

Three Cheers for Surpassing a Manne Research Institute Milestone

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Research is a team sport, and I am thrilled to share that our teamwork has led Manne Research Institute and Lurie Children’s to exceed our Vision 2025 goal of $100 million in extramural research funding. Your ingenuity, collaboration, and hard work have helped us grow from $25 million to $105 million, two years ahead of plan. This is a remarkable achievement for our research enterprise.

To understand the significance of this achievement, let me provide some context. In 2016, Lurie Children’s launched Vision 2025 with a focus on improving children’s health through a multidimensional strategy, including research. The original strategic plan aimed to boost extramural funding to $50 million by the end of 2025. However, less than two years into the plan, we realized that we could aim higher, and we increased the goal to quadruple the funding to $100 million. At the time, this goal was seen as ambitious and maybe even a bit crazy, but we saw the potential of our research teams. Our innovative, passionate, knowledgeable, and collaborative research teams exceeded expectations and made this ambitious goal a reality. Our team also includes passionate supporters in our medical center executive team, the foundation, our board members, and donors who look to our researchers to help fulfill our promises of a safer space, a healthier future for every child and, especially, driving to fulfill the promise of new cures.

To achieve our goal, we understood the need to expand our team of experts, build infrastructure, and increase resources and services. Accordingly, we recruited and welcomed additional principal investigators and researchers to expand and diversify our research activities across the translational science spectrum. We increased the number of staff proficient in pre- and post-award management and educational program development. To support the next generation of medical researchers, we focused on enhancing and expanding resources for our early career faculty and postdoctoral fellows, resulting in a steady increase in the number of career awards granted. Moreover, we invested over $200 million to build the Louis A. Simpson and Kimberly K. Querrey Biomedical Research Center on Northwestern University’s Chicago campus, in partnership with the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, which serves as our research hub and provides 125,000 square feet of state-of-the-art laboratory and office space for Manne Research Institute.

Over the fiscal years 2016–2023, we made a bold decision to invest heavily in our teams. This investment led to numerous achievements, including the generation of $1.9 billion in grant proposals, the securement of $502 million in total grant awards, and the publication of more than 7,900 research papers. Additionally, we conducted 1,474 new human subject studies and 475 new clinical trials during the same period.

During this timeframe, there were numerous major research accomplishments that are significantly contributing to the health and well-being of children and families worldwide. Manne Research Institute teams created precision diagnostics, exposed the inner workings of cancers, improved sepsis outcomes, dissected the genes underpinning congenital anomalies, and changed the way we tackle treatment-refractory seizures. We played a crucial role in the pioneering clinical trials that determined the effectiveness of a drug and gene therapy for treating infants with spinal muscular atrophy.

We demonstrated the potency of a single-dose vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). We opened the door to new treatments for atopic dermatitis and preventing food allergies. Our expertise was instrumental in the FDA’s approval of a gene therapy to treat beta-thalassemia, the CDC’s adoption as best practice of an HIV treatment we trialed, and the engineering and demonstration of wireless wearable sensors for monitoring babies in pediatric intensive care units. We conducted investigations and authored some of the most cited papers on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children, including mental health and suicide ideation. As a result of our research, changes were made to suicide prevention techniques performed during key youth interfaces, such as in the emergency room.

At the end of the day, we celebrate a milestone of funding not because of the money but because of what it represents. What matters most is the realization of our vision, which involves extensive research, discovery, and innovation in pediatric health. This will have a positive impact on the lives of children and families. However, the amount of money we raise is a measure of our success, and it provides us with the power to innovate, bridge gaps in healthcare, and do more. Your success will help us attract more investment and community engagement from a growing group who wants to be part of an organization that makes a difference. Furthermore, your success creates a positive halo for Lurie Children’s, as part of why we are an exceptional place with exceptional people who create exceptional opportunities for better and healthier lives.

I am immensely grateful to all of you for your contributions, and I am proud of what we can achieve together. Now, let’s aim for more significant milestones. This year we are improving our support for science, expanding and diversifying our teams of research professionals, refining and reconstructing our processes, and getting ready to do more. We want to be prepared for what’s next, including an ambitious goal of doubling the research investment to $250 million in the next five years, which would place us among the most elite research institutions and position us to tackle the most audacious health challenges. With our established track record of generating groundbreaking and innovative research, partnering across scientific disciplines, reaching into the community, achieving grant awards to power our science, and our all-in approach, I am confident that our team at Manne Research Institute and Lurie Children’s will succeed.

With kindness and respect,

Pat