NIH and the NIH Clinical Center located in Bethesda Maryland and Children’s National Medical Center in Washington D.C. are collaborating on the new “Translational Research in Pediatrics Program” initiated to support state-of-the-art research on very young patients.
The Clinical Center at NIH sees more rare disease patients than anyplace else in the nation, historically caring for those older than 2 years or that weigh more than 20 pounds. Children’s National is the only exclusive provider of acute pediatric services in the Washington metropolitan area.
NIH investigators will identify a research collaborator to work with at Children’s National and then Children’s National will offer NIH access to their Clinical Research Center for outpatient visits. So far, Children’s National has authorized 20 inpatient hospital admissions under the program using private funds.
“We are grateful that Children’s National is opening its doors to help us expand our research profile and establish new partnerships between our institutions that will make a difference in the lives of young children suffering from rare, and often life-threatening diseases,” said NIH Clinical Center Director John I Gallin, M.D.
In addition, NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and Children’s Research Institute located at Children’s National will work together on a study to evaluate young patients with a group of inherited metabolic disorders that affects between 1 in 50,000 and 80,000 babies born in the U.S.
Another unique training program the “Pediatric Hematology and Transfusion Medicine Multidisciplinary Research Training Award” has been funded with the Children’s Research Institute at Children’s National by NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
The program leverages faculty and resources from NIH, George Washington University, American Red Cross, FDA, and Howard University School of Medicine. The program addresses the lack of well-trained clinical and translational investigators in pediatric subspecialty fields. This collaboration is an innovative approach or solution to obtaining the number of researchers and pediatric subspecialists in hematology and transfusion medicine.
