The Children’s Discovery Institute (CDI) has awarded $2 million in research grants to investigators across the University’s schools of Arts & Sciences and Medicine.
These are the first funding awards since the launch of the Institute in 2006. A second wave of funding, worth about $3 million, will be announced in April.
The CDI’s Scientific Advisory Board, charged with determining the most outstanding awards from a large applicant pool, gave special consideration to interdisciplinary research initiatives.
“Our goal is to conduct research in a way that has never been done anywhere on behalf of children,” said Jonathan D. Gitlin, M.D., the Helene B. Roberson Professor of Pediatrics and scientific director of the CDI.
“We’re pulling people together with unique skills who’ve never worked together,” Gitlin said. “We’re asking them to investigate a problem in a new, imaginative and interdisciplinary way that completely leverages the intellectual capital of this University.”
One newly funded initiative supported within the McDonnell Pediatric Cancer Center is providing a remarkable opportunity to explore the potential of nanostructures, tiny particles that could help detect and treat pediatric brain cancers.
“By bringing together specialists in the fields of chemistry, biology and medicine, we are in a unique position to make progress toward the development of materials to tackle this medical problem,” said Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences.
Wooley is part of a team that includes pediatric neurosurgeon Jeffrey R. Leonard, M.D.; and Sheila Stewart, Ph.D., and John-Stephen A. Taylor, Ph.D., both in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences.
St. Louis Children’s Hospital and the School of Medicine jointly launched the CDI in January 2006.
Grants will be made to fund multidisciplinary investigator teams, faculty recruitment, research fellows and unique educational initiatives.
The CDI initially is focusing on four broad areas encompassing some of the most pernicious diseases affecting children through the McDonnell Pediatric Cancer Center, the Center for Musculoskeletal Diseases, the Center for Pediatric Pulmonary Disease and the Congenital Heart Disease Center.
With these awards in place, research will begin immediately.
“With pediatric brain cancer, we can now start figuring out how to get nanoparticles into brain tumors taken from children and placed in mice and how to begin manipulating those brain tumors for new treatments,” Gitlin said.
The CDI funding provides for eight research initiatives, recruiting a faculty member, two research fellows and two educational programs.
“We mean for this to be one of the most visionary partnerships in pediatric medicine,” Gitlin said.
“The awardees show exceptional ability and promise,” Gitlin added. “The majority are young investigators, and half are female. In this regard, the CDI is especially proud of its first faculty recruit, Christina Gurnett. She will begin work immediately within the new CDI-designated space in the McDonnell Pediatric Research Building.”
Gurnett earned an M.D./Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and has been an instructor in neurology at the medical school. The award enables her to start her own laboratory here.
St. Louis Children’s Hospital’s “Building for Care, Searching for Cures” campaign has raised $118 million toward its $125 million goal, a large part of which will fund the CDI.
Gitlin said he believes the CDI investment will pave the way for broader initiatives that can be sustained with funding from the National Institutes of Health.
What the CDI has done thus far is take the most important step just by getting started, he said.
“To plant the seed, that’s the real accomplishment so far of the Children’s Discovery Institute,” Gitlin said. “It tills soil where it was never tilled before and puts the seed down and protects it for a while so something can grow that couldn’t grow there before.”
Investigators will report early results to the Scientific Advisory Board in six months.
Each grant focuses on one of the following: interdisciplinary research initiatives, recruitment of new faculty, predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees and unique educational programs. All fall under one of the four centers within the CDI.
Children’s Discovery Institute grant recipients
New faculty
• Christina A. Gurnett, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of neurology and pediatrics
Interdisciplinary research initiatives
• Fetal origins of metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease
Kelle H. Moley, M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology
Jean E. Schaffer, M.D., associate professor of medicine
• Genetic basis of congenital heart disease
Thomas M. Morgan, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics
Patrick Y. Jay, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of pediatrics
• Hypermutability of p53 in oncogenesis
Robi D. Mitra, Ph.D., assistant professor of genetics
• Nanostructures in the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric brain cancer
Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences, professor of chemistry and of radiology
Jeffrey R. Leonard, M.D., assistant professor of neurosurgery
• Mechanisms of function and regulation of the pulmonary microcirculation
Allan Doctor, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics
• Comparative genomics of parturition
Justin C. Fay, Ph.D., assistant professor of genetics
Louis J. Muglia, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pediatrics
• Genetic basis of pleuropulmonary blastoma family cancer syndrome
D. Ashley Hill, M.D., assistant professor of pathology and immunology
• Regulation of bone growth and development
Lijuan Zhang, Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology and immunology
Predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees
• Todd E. Druley, M.D., Ph.D., fellow in pediatric hematology-oncology
• Raja Natarajan, Ph.D., fellow in genetics
Unique educational programs
• Program for the education of residents in Genomic Medicine of Congenital Heart Disease
Tyler Reimschisel, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics
• Educational symposium focusing on the genetic basis of musculoskeletal birth defects
Matthew B. Dobbs, M.D., assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery