August 9, 2016

91015drhairaward640Dr. Amy Hair, a neonatologist and program director of the Neonatal Nutrition Program at Texas Children’s Hospital, was recently awarded a $350,000 research grant from the Gerber Foundation.

This generous grant will support the Targeted Fortification Project, a neonatal nutrition study led by Hair that will evaluate the short-term effects of a high versus standard protein diet on growth outcomes and body composition in the smallest preterm infants weighing between 500 to 1,000 grams.

“While an exclusive human milk diet is associated with improved outcomes in our highest risk neonates, it is important to evaluate the benefits of a high protein exclusive human milk diet and the possible positive changes in body composition, specifically lean mass, in these infants,” Hair said.

Using a randomized study design, infants in the control group will receive a standard protein diet that consists of mother’s own milk or donor human milk with donor human milk derived fortifier. Based on the amount of protein in the human milk, fortification of feeds will be adjusted to reach an average of 3.5 to 3.8 grams per kilogram per day of protein. Data will be recorded for milk analysis, nutrition and infant growth.

The intervention group will receive the same standard feeding regimen with the addition of extra human milk fortification to give a high protein diet. Based on the amount of protein in the human milk, fortification of feeds will be adjusted to reach an average of 4.2 to 4.5 grams per kilogram per day of protein.

Both diets will be continued until approximately 35 to 36 weeks postmenstrual age (an infant’s gestational age at birth plus postnatal age) and a bone mineral density and body composition scan will be performed.

“We hypothesize that infants who receive a high protein diet will have more lean mass and a 15 percent improvement in length velocity at 36 weeks postmenstrual age compared to infants who received only a standard protein diet,” Hair said.

Much of Hair’s research has been dedicated to improving the long-term outcomes of premature and critically ill infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Her work in neonatal nutrition has led to significant changes in clinical practice in the NICU at Texas Children’s and other pediatric hospitals.

In her study published in Breastfeeding Medicine, Hair found that premature infants weighting less than 1,250 grams at birth improved their growth outcomes in the NICU after being fed an exclusive human milk-based diet. In a separate study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, Hair found that adding a human milk-based cream in the exclusive human milk diets of premature infants resulted in better growth outcomes in terms of weight and length than infants who received just the exclusive human milk diet.

As a result of Hair’s extensive research in neonatal nutrition, Texas Children’s Newborn Center implemented an exclusive human milk feeding protocol in 2009, which has led to a 77 percent decrease in the rate of necrotizing enterocolitis, a devastating intestinal disease that affects premature infants.

“I am grateful to the Gerber Foundation for providing Texas Children’s with this research grant,” said Hair, who is also an assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. “This will help advance neonatal nutrition research to continue to improve the outcomes of premature and critically ill infants.”

July 19, 2016

72016Wadhwa175All Department of Surgery researchers have an in-house resource available for tissue banking. The Children’s Surgery Biobank (CSB) is an experienced tissue banking resource set up for surgery researchers interested in banking tissue specimens for their specific research projects in collaboration with the Texas Children’s Research Tissue Support Services. The biobank is supported by the Texas Children’s Hospital Department of Surgery.

The CSB provides services for consenting, tissue collection, banking and database management. The biobank can store blood (for DNA, plasma and serum), urine, tissue and other biofluid specimens, along with fully annotated clinical and phenotypic data from patients undergoing surgery at Texas Children’s Hospital.

This central repository was developed to save surgery researchers time and effort in collecting and storing specimens. It also serves as an important means of tracking research samples across all divisions of surgery, helping to accelerate pediatric research and to promote collaborations within and outside the institution.

For information on the program or protocols around tissue banking, contact Dr. Lalita Wadhwa at lxwadhwa@texaschildrens.org.

June 14, 2016

102317Zoghbi175On May 31, The Shaw Prize Foundation in Hong Kong awarded the 2016 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine to pioneering neuroscientist Dr. Huda Y. Zoghbi, director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and Ralph D. Feigin Professor at Baylor College of Medicine.

The award was presented jointly to Zoghbi and Dr. Adrian P. Bird, Buchanan professor of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh, for their groundbreaking discovery of the genes and the encoded proteins associated with Rett syndrome.

“I am humbled to be honored by the esteemed Shaw Prize Foundation,” Zoghbi said. “We will use this support to continue the research into how Rett syndrome affects the brain with the hope that our research will impact future treatment options.”

Rett syndrome is the leading cause of intellectual disabilities in girls, affecting one in 10,000, and is particularly devastating as girls affected by the syndrome develop normally for the first few months of life before a catastrophic decline in neurological capabilities.

The Shaw Prize is an international award established in 2002 designed to foster scientific research. Awarded annually, the Prize honors individuals who have achieved significant breakthroughs in academic and scientific research or applications, and whose work has resulted in a positive and profound impact on mankind.

Zoghbi will receive the award, along with Bird, at a ceremony later this year in Hong Kong. The $1.2 million prize will be shared by Bird and Zoghbi.

Zoghbi’s discovery that mutations in the MEPC2 gene cause this devastating neurological disorder paved the way for the development of a diagnostic genetic test for Rett syndrome.

June 7, 2016

6816ChronResearch640Each week, Texas Children’s publishes a newspaper ad and companion website featuring our milestones as part of the Houston Chronicle’s historic Houston Legends series.

Click here for this week’s feature.

May 18, 2016

51816drparsons175

Dr. Will Parsons, a pediatric oncologist at Texas Children’s Cancer Center and associate professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, will participate in the efforts to accelerate cancer research through the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Parsons will join the National Cancer Institute’s Blue Ribbon Panel Working Group on Pediatric Cancer, which is providing insight and direction to the Moonshot initiative.

The Moonshot initiative was announced in January by President Barack Obama and is being led by Vice President Joe Biden. The initiative aims to accelerate current cancer research efforts and break down barriers to progress, making more therapies available to more patients, while also improving the ability to prevent cancer and detect it at an early stage.

The NCI, in consultation with the National Institutes of Health and the White House, assembled the Blue Ribbon Panel, a working group of the National Cancer Advisory Board, to provide expert advice on the vision, proposed scientific goals and implementation of the National Cancer Moonshot. The panel will consider how to best advance the themes proposed for the Moonshot, including an intensive examination of the opportunities and impediments in cancer research.

The Blue Ribbon Panel’s working groups, including the pediatric cancer group, will gather input from the cancer research community and industry across specific disciplines and sectors. The findings and recommendations of the panel and its working groups will be reported to the National Cancer Advisory Board (NCAB) later this summer. The NCAB will use the panel’s findings to provide final recommendations to the NCI director, who will in turn deliver a report to the White House Moonshot Task Force and ultimately to the President.

“I’m excited about the potential of the Moonshot initiative to improve care for children with cancer through collaborative research,” Parsons said. “We look forward to contributing to these discussions based on our experience at Texas Children’s Cancer Center.”

In addition to coordinating the Working Groups, the Blue Ribbon Panel is accepting cancer research ideas to be considered under the Moonshot from the scientific community and general public. Individuals and groups are encouraged to submit their ideas through July 1 to CancerResearchIdeas.cancer.gov.

Parsons is director of the Pediatric Center for Precision Oncology at Texas Children’s Cancer Center, as well as the co-director of the Brain Tumor Program and the Cancer Genetics and Genomics Program. He specializes in the treatment of children with brain and spinal cord tumors, and his team’s research has been critical to the understanding of genes involved in pediatric solid tumors, leukemias, and histiocytic disorders.

In addition, Parsons’ research program focuses on the clinical application of genomic technologies in pediatric cancer care. He is the co-principal investigator with Dr. Sharon Plon, professor of pediatrics – oncology at Baylor, on the Baylor Advancing Sequencing in Childhood Cancer Care, or BASIC3, study, a National Human Genome Research Institute and National Cancer Institute-funded Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research project to examine the usefulness of tumor and germline whole exome sequencing in children newly diagnosed with certain cancers. He also serves as the Children’s Oncology Group study chair for the NCI Pediatric MATCH study, a precision oncology clinical trial for children with relapsed and refractory cancers that is planned to open in late 2016.

51816KateMazur175The Clinical Research Center/Research Resources Office has presented the Clinical Research Award for Second Quarter 2016 to Kate Mazur, instructor and pediatric nurse practitioner, Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers.

This award was established by the Clinical Research Center in collaboration with the Research Resources Office to recognize and honor individual contributions to protecting the best interest of the research subjects and compliance with applicable rules and regulations.

Mazur’s research activities in the CRC focus on conducting clinical trials of novel therapies to treat pediatric cancers. She actively participates in the consent process and screening, management of patients enrolled on Phase I and II clinical trials, as well as palliative and supportive care for these patients and their families.

May 10, 2016

51116texaschildrensrice640What happens when Texas Children’s surgeons and Rice University engineering students collaborate to develop innovative solutions to reduce the pain of stent removal after a urinary tract procedure? An award-winning device that could potentially revolutionize the field of pediatric urologic surgery.

Last fall, Dr. Chester Koh, a pediatric urologist and surgeon at Texas Children’s and Baylor College of Medicine, challenged a group of Rice students to come up with an innovative tool to simplify ureteral stent removals, a fairly common procedure that is performed on more than 2,000 pediatric patients nationwide each year.

After a stent is inserted into a patient’s ureter to improve urine flow from the kidneys to the bladder, the stent is removed after four weeks of healing. The current procedure involves inserting an endoscope into the urethra and bladder to locate the stent and pull it out, which requires children to be placed under anesthesia.

After extensively collaborating with Texas Children’s surgeons to better understand the challenges of the current procedure and the need for refinement, the Rice team developed a simple, less invasive device to remove ureteral stents from children using a small magnetic bead and a powerful custom-built electromagnet the team designed and 3-D printed at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen. The tiny metallic bead can pass safely through the urethra as the magnet pulls the bead out of the body followed by the stent that the bead is attached to.

Rice students briefly considered designing a stent that would dissolve over time, but decided the magnetic attachment would be far simpler and less prone to complications. This new innovation in ureteral stent removal in children is less painful and costs two-thirds less than the standard procedure because it does not require anesthesia and it can be completed in minutes rather than hours.

The team’s invention, the Ureteral Stent Electromagnetic Removable Bead, won two significant awards this month: the top $5,000 prize at Rice University’s annual Engineering Design Showcase and the Grand Prize for student design at the annual Design of Medical Devices Conference in Minneapolis.

“We hope this device will transform the field of pediatric urologic surgery,” said Rice bioengineering student Eric Yin, who is considering applying his engineering expertise to a career in pediatric medicine. “A lot of devices are designed for adults and Dr. Koh is one of the movers trying to develop more devices that are designed for children.”

Koh says the Rice team’s new device – and others designed in partnership with Texas Children’s surgeons – address the severe shortage of medical devices designed for infants and children.

“The development of pediatric medical devices lag adult device development by more than 10 years,” said Koh, who has a mechanical engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley. “This is an important example of why academic partnerships are needed to advance pediatric medical device projects, since the pediatric medical device pipeline is currently limited. I applaud the Rice team for showing its dedication and passion to the kids under our care at Texas Children’s.”

Prior to coming to Texas Children’s to establish the robotic surgery program in 2013, Koh co-founded a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-supported pediatric device consortium based in Southern California. He is creating a similar initiative at Texas Children’s, drawing on the top engineering talent in the region.

This year, three engineering teams from Rice University and six teams from Texas A&M University are collaborating with Texas Children’s surgeons to develop new pediatric medical devices. with support from the Texas Children’s Auxiliary Denton Cooley Innovation Award. Koh plans to collaborate with other institutions in the future.