IU, Ohio and Kentucky partner to advance childhood disease research

Children's doctors in Indiana soon will partner with colleagues in Ohio and Kentucky through a new program focused on working across state lines to advance research on childhood disease.

The Pediatric Regional Collaborative Grant program, supported by the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, will support research between pediatric scientists across the region, including Indiana University Health Riley Hospital for Children; Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center; Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio; Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland; and the University of Kentucky Department of Pediatrics.

"Unlike adult patients, comprehensive child health services are focused in a small number of children's hospitals across the United States," said Dr. Wade Clapp, chair and Richard L. Schreiner Professor of Pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine. "Furthering our understanding of children's diseases, which include a large number of rare diseases, is often best served by collaboration among children's hospitals. We look forward to collaborating with investigators in Ohio and Kentucky on identifying better treatments and cures for childhood diseases through this initiative."

Each participating organization will provide the funding for the project component that takes place within its institution. Each collaboration site will contribute $10,000 of support for a maximum allowable budget of $50,000.

The Indiana CTSI, which includes Indiana University, Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame, accelerates the process by which scientific discoveries in the lab are transformed into new patient treatments in the community. Indiana CTSI is part of a 55-member national network funded by a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health. These include centers in Ohio and Kentucky, which also will support the pediatric grant program.

Clapp added that this type of cross-institutional collaboration has already helped transform the treatment of certain childhood diseases, such as cancers, over the past 30 years.