NIH Projects

Investigators in the Department of Pediatrics at Washington University hold many NIH-supported grants. Larger, multicenter projects are:

Child Health Research Center

The Department of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine has received a five year renewal of its designation as a Child Health Research Center of Excellence by the National Institutes of Health. This Center, supported by a $2 million grant, is using models developed at the Center to study pathology of diseases that affect children. With this center, which focuses on human developmental biology, we have the ability both to understand the pathology of the diseases, as well as to evaluate new treatments that eventually will benefit children. More information is available on the CHRC web site. The principal investigator for this project is Dr. Alan Schwartz.

Silent Cerebral Infarct Multi-Center Clinical Trial

Silent cerebral infarct is the most common cause of severe neurological disease in children with sickle cell anemia, occurring in 22% of this population prior to their 18th birthday. The overall goal of this project is to determine whether blood transfusion therapy will decrease further neurologic morbidity in children with silent cerebral infarcts, and if so, the magnitude of this benefit. We are instituting a multi-center randomized trial with 22 Clinical Sites, a Clinical Coordinating Center and a Statistical Coordinating Center to test the primary hypothesis that prophylactic blood transfusion therapy in children with silent cerebral infarcts will result in reduction in the rate of subsequent overt strokes or new cerebral infarcts as defined by MRI of the brain. The secondary aims of this trial are determining whether: 1) prophylactic blood transfusion therapy will limit further decline in general intellectual abilities; and 2) the overall benefits of blood transfusion therapy for silent cerebral infarcts outweigh risks associated with this therapy in a formal risk benefit analysis. We anticipate results of this study could lead to a change in standard care practices for children affected with both sickle cell disease and silent cerebral infarcts. The principal investigator for this project is Dr. Michael DeBaun.