Children’s Memorial Research Programs Continue Robust Growth
Research programs at Children’s Memorial Hospital (CMH), affiliated with the Feinberg School of Medicine, are experiencing significant growth with the arrival of several new recruits. Mary J.C. Hendrix, PhD, is the new president and scientific director, and Xiaobin Wang, MD, MPH, ScD, director of the Mary Ann and J. Milburn Smith Child Health Research Program at the Children’s Memorial Institute for Education and Research (CMIER), the research arm of CMH. In addition, the institute recruited three investigators in the new Human and Molecular Genetics Program, five in Developmental Systems Biology, one in Neurobiology, and two in Disease Pathogenesis, including its first full-time stem cell biology investigator.
CMIER’s Transgenic and Targeted Mutagenesis Facility has been expanded to continue providing critically important animal models of genetic disease, including cancer, to all Northwestern University scientists. Philip Iannaccone, MD, DPhil, professor of pediatrics and director of the Developmental Systems Biology Program, is scientific director of the facility, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Northwestern University.
Support for clinical research at CMH, a member of the McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University, increased through resources and funding provided by the General Clinical Research Center of Northwestern University, one of 80 NIH-funded clinical research centers in the country, for which CMH is the pediatric satellite location. CMH investigators using the center quadrupled in the past year, and outpatient research visits increased from 21 to 250. CMH recently added a dedicated research nurse and two research pharmacists and plans to open a two-bed ambulatory unit for research studies next year.