Category: Portfolio Pieces

In this story, I explored a body of research on improvements to in-hospital CPR that CHOP clinician-researchers had been at work on for more than a decade, but that had been under-reported within the CHOP community. Coincidentally, I discovered the story just as the investigators were preparing to be awarded a major NIH grant that put several pieces of their program’s work together, so I was able to announce the grant through this feature article.

Seeing the Impact of a Decade of Genomics Discoveries

This story looks back on the first decade of accomplishments of a center that was established as one of the largest research investments at CHOP at the time. I pursued the story initially due to Dr. Hakonarson’s recognition on the Thomson Reuters “highly cited” list but broadened its focus once I realized that his center’s tenth anniversary was approaching.

A Molecular Balancing Act to Fight Autoimmune Disease and Cancer

I found out about one new grant Dr. Hancock had received. To my surprise, when I met with him for an interview, he mentioned that he had received notice on the same day of another award to study the same molecules but for an opposite effect. It was completely fascinating! This molecular biology story turned out to be one of the most popular articles in our Bench to Bedside publication that month, despite the relative obscurity of its focus.

Concussions’ Unpredictability Underscores Need for Follow-Up Care

Using Doctors’ Certification Requirements to Increase HPV Vaccination

CHOP Honors Distinguished Research Trainees on Poster Day

CHOP Research In the News: DNA Scrunching, Video Games, Smart Drugs

CHOP Research In the News: Obesity, PTSD, and Alice in Wonderland

Staying Safe in the Sun: A Sun Protection Q&A

CHOP’s Foerderer Awards Support Novel Biomedical Research Studies

A Week in the Life of the Research Navigator

For this guest blog post written by Katherine Yang-Iott, I initially proposed the concept of hosting a blog post about Katherine’s new role, approached Katherine, and worked with her to develop a “day in the life” concept into a “week in the life” post. My role included guiding her in how to think about writing the piece through contributing multiple phases of editing to shape the final product.

New Brain Study Tailored for Nonverbal Children on the Autism Spectrum

February 29, 2016March 13, 2016 · Leave a comment ·

Originally published in Bench to Bedside, the CHOP Research monthly publication.

I composed this original article based on interviews with the investigators.

Excerpt:

The children who speak least — or not at all — are rarely represented in cutting-edge brain imaging research on autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Researchers at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia aim to change that with a new study enrolling children with ASD who are minimally verbal or nonverbal.

“This is really an underserved community who have not been given the opportunity to participate in research,” said Timothy Roberts, PhD, vice chair of research in the Department of Radiology at CHOP and a professor of Radiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “More importantly, the results of the research are not directly applicable to them, so even if we developed a drug for ASD impairments led by our biomarkers, we wouldn’t know if this treatment really was good for individuals with ASD with more limited verbal and cognitive ability.”

Dr. Roberts and colleagues from CHOP’s Center for Autism Research want to know whether certain aspects of neural rhythms and timing of neural firing that they found to be characteristic of ASD in previous studies, using noninvasive brain imaging called magnetoencephalography (MEG), are indeed common across the spectrum.

“When neural activity is happening, it produces electrical and magnetic fields,” said J. Christopher Edgar, PhD, a co-leader of the study and a clinical neuropsychologist and brain imaging researcher in the Department of Radiology at CHOP. “We use this machine to measure the magnetic field. We do that to look at brain function.”

The neural biomarkers that Dr. Edgar and Dr. Roberts have found correlate with the level of clinical impairment in the children they have studied to date, particularly in the realm of language ability.

“There is a scientific question: Does this correlation extend into this nonverbal and minimally verbal population in a continuous way, or is it a separate disorder?” Dr. Roberts said. “I suppose a fundamental question is: Is the autism spectrum continuous or discrete in terms of these brain markers?”

Researchers Test Magnetic Re-Seeding to Speed Blood Vessel Recovery

February 29, 2016March 13, 2016 · Leave a comment ·

Originally published in Bench to Bedside, the CHOP Research monthly publication.

I composed this original article based on an interview with the investigator.

Excerpt:

Reopening blocked blood vessels can mean the difference between life and death for many patients, including children with pulmonary hypertension and adults with coronary artery disease. But the procedure used for restoring blood flow can cause extensive vascular injury, wiping away an essential protective layer of cells lining the walls of arteries and veins: the endothelium.

It may take the body weeks or months to heal that damage. Some long stretches of damaged vessels may never fully regrow the endothelium, which naturally propagates inward from the healthy edge toward the center of the wiped-out area.

“Our idea is that if we could put some seeds of endothelium regrowth within the boundaries of this denuded arterial segment, so that the endothelium can grow from those foci, we could speed up the process dramatically,” said Michael Chorny, PhD, a researcher at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and research assistant professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who specializes in developing delivery systems for therapies. “By changing the pattern of endothelium recovery, we may in practice restore it on scale of days.”

Researchers Ask How Children With Autism Communicate Pain

February 29, 2016March 13, 2016 · Leave a comment ·

Originally published in Bench to Bedside, the CHOP Research monthly publication.

I composed this original article based on an interview with the investigator.

Excerpt:

When children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have acute medical needs, such as a broken bone or appendicitis, they are as likely to experience pain as any other child. But social and communication differences associated with ASD may cause clinical caregivers to miss cues showing that pain. This may compromise timely and accurate assessment and treatment. Recognizing this challenge, researchers at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia conducted a qualitative study that suggests clinicians should be prepared to ask children on the spectrum about pain in different ways.

The interdisciplinary study team set out to learn more about how these youth express and describe the experience of pain. They enrolled participants with an ASD diagnosis who came to CHOP for surgery and whose verbal language proficiency was sufficient to complete interviews about their pain during their hospital stay after their operation. The results were published in January in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

Early Smell Exposure May Be Critical for Sensory Development

February 29, 2016March 13, 2016 · Leave a comment ·

Originally published in Bench to Bedside, the CHOP Research monthly publication.

I composed this original article based on interviews with the investigators.

Excerpt:

Many parents try to offer their healthy babies a rich sensory environment, full of new sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, to stimulate the developing brain to appreciate life’s delicious complexities to the fullest. And for vision and hearing, there is a solid foundation of research showing that there is a critical period early in life when adequate stimulation of those senses is essential for their healthy development.

Now, a pilot study conducted at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and published in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology provides some of the first-ever evidence for a critical period in developing the sense of smell, or olfaction, too. The findings have particular implications for rehabilitating young patients, including severely premature infants, who receive lifesaving medical interventions that temporarily prevent airflow through the nasal passages during this potentially critical period.

Four Projects, One Goal: Curing Childhood Cancer

February 29, 2016March 13, 2016 · Leave a comment ·

Originally published in Bench to Bedside, the CHOP Research monthly publication.

I prepared this article based on the project descriptions and email correspondence with the investigators.

Excerpt:

Many cancer treatments have harmful side effects when they act on healthy tissues in addition to cancer cells. A team led by Garrett M. Brodeur, MD, director of the Cancer Predisposition Program at CHOP, and funded by a CURE grant, is seeking ways to increase drug delivery to the tumors to improve drugs’ effectiveness while reducing their toxicity.

Their method uses tiny nanoparticles as delivery vehicles. Nanoparticles are a promising way to get drugs into tumors because tumor blood vessels are leaky, and the nanoparticles can enter the tumor much more easily than normal tissues.

“By increasing drug delivery to tumors by one or two orders of magnitude, we can achieve dramatically better anti-tumor effects while simultaneously decreasing total drug exposure to patients,” Dr. Brodeur said.