Research Program
Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center
In April 2005 the new 12-story Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center of Northwestern University was completed. At a cost of $200 million, the center contains approximately 185,000 square feet of research space for laboratories in the fields of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, human genetics, neurosciences, spinal injury and liver transplantation. The new center will accommodate approximately 1000 researchers, technicians, postdoctoral students, lab assistants and staff. Along with the renovation of 30,000 square feet in the McGaw Pavilion, research space has increased by 75% for the Feinberg School of Medicine. In 2006, the State of Illinois gave Northwestern University $3.5 million for stem cell research. Most of the money went to Mary J.C. Hendrix, PhD for studies of human stem cells to determine their potential to reverse the progression of malignant tumors, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's disease, brain injury, and epilepsy.
On November 17, 2003 the Mary Beth Donnelley Clinical Pharmacology Center of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center was formally dedicated. The Richard Donnelley family donated over a half-million dollars to the Northwestern Memorial Foundation in memory of Mary Beth Donnelley to establish the Center located in the Department's research area on the 13th floor of the Ward building.
Michael Avram, PhD was named the director of the facility with Tom Krejcie, MD the associate director. Technical support for the facility will be provided by Lynn Luong, BS and Kiril Raikoff, MS. The facility includes a state-of-the-art liquid chromatography system connected to a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer enabling us to detect less than nanogram quantities of drugs used in cancer chemotherapy and cancer-related pain therapy.
Grants/Awards
Northwestern University
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Drs. McCarthy and Wong review data collected on nerve injuries following vaginal delivery. |
Cynthia Wong, MD along with co-investigators David Green, MD, Susan Gerber, MD, Robert McCarthy, PharmD and Sharon Grouper, MD have received a grant for $25,000 from the Women's Board of Northwestern Memorial Hospital as part of the Eleanor Wood-Prince Grant Initiative to study the “Coagulation factor changes associated with postpartum hysterectomies”.
Barb Scavone, MD and co-investigators Michele Sproviero, MD , Robert McCarthy, PharmD, and Viva Siddall, MS received a grant for $12,500 from the Woman's Board of Northwestern Memorial Hospital as part of the Eleanor Wood-Prince Grant Initiative to assess our resident's ability to correctly perform a general anesthetic for a cesarean section. This study will be performed in the Department's Human Simulator Center with the help of Lenny Wade, MS .
Cynthia Wong, MD has been awarded a 2004 Clinical Scholars Research Award grant from the International Anesthesia Research Society for her study entitled "Neuraxial vs. systemic analgesia for latent phase labor analgesia in nulliparous parturients with induction of labor: effect on rate of operative delivery". These $75,000 grants are awarded to further the understanding of clinical practice in anesthesiology and related sciences through clinical investigations. Robert McCarthy, PharmD is Dr. Wong's co-investigator and mentor for the project.
Vania Apkarian, PhD, associate professor of physiology, has received $310,440 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for his study on "Cortical Dynamics for Pain Reception in Behaving Rats."
Children's Memorial Hospital
Children's Memorial has completed construction of a $24 million addition that doubles space for the Children's Memorial Institute for Education and Research.
In 2003, medical school faculty members based at Children's obtained more than $18 million in external research support, an increase of more than 20 percent from the previous year. The Department of Surgery also recruited new faculty members in several pediatric specialty areas including neurology, transplantation, pediatric surgery, and urology.
Subspecialty Studies
Contrary to previous research, spinal-epidural analgesia given early in labor (cervical dilation of less than four centimeters) does not increase rates of Cesarean section, according to Cynthia A. Wong, MD, and her colleagues. This landmark study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Clinical research studies are focused in the areas of general and regional anesthesia, intensive care, and pain medicine. Externally funded investigators, Robert Fragen, MD, Shireen Ahmad, MD, William Peruzzi, MD, and Charles Coté, MD, each direct several clinical trial studies investigating the pharmacology of anesthetic and analgesic drugs in adult and pediatric patients and new forms of therapies for patients with a variety of pulmonary diseases and insults. The pain medicine group, led by Honorio Benzon, MD; the obstetrical service group led by Cynthia Wong, MD; and the intraoperative regional anesthesia group, led by Antoun Nader, MD; conduct studies aimed at validating the efficacy and advantages of new modes of regional and systemic analgesia in their patient groups.
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Nancy Crnkovich, MSN, (left) and Dr. Ahmad educate a patient about the post-operative ileus research study. |
The pain medicine group is investigating innovative approaches to postoperative pain management. The obstetrical anesthesia group is also investigating the effects of labor analgesia on obstetric outcome and new therapies for post dural puncture headache and postoperative pain.
The pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of anesthetic drug onset are being studied by Michael Avram, PhD and Tom Krejcie, MD. These efforts concentrate on the early events following intravenous drug administration as determined by intravascular mixing and early tissue distribution when maximum drug action is achieved.
The department has recently initiated a new basic science program in pain research with the successful recruitment of three scientists: Jaime García-Añoveros, PhD, Anne Duggan, PhD, and Vania Apkarian, PhD , who all have joint appointments in the physiology department.