Cardinal Health grants funds to support Tissue Engineering Program at Nationwide Children's Hospital

Cardinal Health recently donated $1 million to Nationwide Children's Hospital to help advance the work and research of its Tissue Engineering Program.

"Cardinal Health has been a corporate partner of Nationwide Children's for more than 25 years, supporting vital hospital programs and services," said Steve Allen, MD, chief executive officer of Nationwide Children's. "We appreciate Cardinal Health's long-standing commitment and unwavering support of the work we do and the children and families we serve. We thank them for standing with us at the forefront of pediatric health care and research."

"We are incredibly gratified to support research that will transform the lives of children and lead to other breakthroughs in medicine," said George Barrett, chairman and chief executive officer of Cardinal Health and also a member of Nationwide Children's board. "We are proud to partner with Nationwide Children's Hospital in this important pediatric work that will have a significant impact in our community and around the country."

Tissue engineering is the process by which the child's own cells are used to 'grow' new tissue or organs for repair of congenital defects, or defects that are present at birth. Christopher Breuer, MD, and Toshiharu Shinoka, MD, PhD, co-directors of the Tissue Engineering Program at Nationwide Children's who came to the hospital from Yale University last year, were the first in the world to tissue engineer blood vessels and implant them in human infants for repair of congenital heart defects.

"The fundamental problem faced by surgeons caring for children with congenital anomalies is the lack of sufficient tissue for reconstruction that is capable of growth," said Dr. Breuer, also the director for Tissue Engineering in The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center's Center for Regenerative Medicine and Cell Based Therapies. "The method we've developed holds the incredibly exciting potential to completely change how we care for our patients."

Drs. Breuer and Shinoka have approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct the first human clinical trial in the country to investigate the safety and effectiveness of this method.