Research

Best Practices for Research Recruitment and Retention
Best Practices for Research Recruitment and Retention 1024 575 Tiasha Letostak, PhD

You can’t obtain study data without participants. From initial design and promotion to communication tactics and patient satisfaction, here are some strategies to ensure success. Advancing pediatric research depends on successful recruitment and retention of study participants. Unfortunately, 9 out of 10 trials end up having to double their original timelines in order to meet…

Childhood Kidney Stones: Their Surprising Connection to Future Disease
Childhood Kidney Stones: Their Surprising Connection to Future Disease 150 150 Jeb Phillips

Once thought to be an adult condition, urinary stone disease is increasingly found in children – and may be related to the development of cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease and low bone density. By one well-regarded estimate, the risk of developing urinary stone disease in childhood doubled between 1997 and 2012. That’s worrying enough on…

Harnessing the Immune System: Has the Cure for Cancer Been Within Us All Along?
Harnessing the Immune System: Has the Cure for Cancer Been Within Us All Along? 1024 575 Abbie Miller

By learning to manipulate the immune system to target cancer cells, clinician-scientists are ushering in a new era in cancer treatments. The advances in cancer immunotherapy have been headline-making, and some clinical studies have produced stories of near-miraculous recoveries. From the immunotherapy drug credited with curing former president Jimmy Carter’s cancer (pembrolizumab) to the promising…

How Does Genomic Medicine Become a Reality for Children’s Health?
How Does Genomic Medicine Become a Reality for Children’s Health? 1024 575 Jan Arthur
conceptual art of DNA

Perhaps one of the most important initiatives to advance our understanding of pediatric disease is genomic analysis. Genomics encompasses all aspects of understanding the human genetic code, especially how genetic information contained in every human cell can be interpreted to prevent disease and customize treatments for nearly every type of illness. Genomic analysis allows us…

Achieving CLARITY
Achieving CLARITY 1024 575 Abbie Miller
conceptual art of DNA

Multidisciplinary team from Nationwide Children’s wins international genomics competition. Accurate, patient-centered, comprehensive. That’s how the judges and leaders of the CLARITY Undiagnosed Challenge described the work of a team from Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Those same words could be used to describe the highly motivated and diverse team who surprised themselves by winning the challenge. “When we entered the challenge, we knew we would…

Technology Expands Access to Translational Medicine
Technology Expands Access to Translational Medicine 150 150 Abbie Miller

When primary care physicians, specialists and all the lab work in their arsenal fail to provide a diagnosis for debilitating symptoms, patients earn the label of “undiagnosed.” These undiagnosed patients wait with unresolved symptoms for medical research to catch up with them. The Undiagnosed Diseases Program (UDP) at the National Institutes of Health sees 120-150 previously undefined…

Building the Modern-Day Vaccine
Building the Modern-Day Vaccine 150 150 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES

Vaccine development used to be straightforward. Now, the challenges are many and the successes are few. What will it take to overcome the obstacles presented by both immunology and society? For 160 years, vaccine after vaccine succeeded at safely and effectively preventing its targeted illness using a set of standard strategies. Scientists knew they simply…