The primary pediatric teaching facility of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, CMH is recognized as one of the finest children’s hospitals in the United States. The 265-bed freestanding hospital is the major pediatric tertiary care referral center in the Chicago metropolitan area. Its staff of medical school faculty members, who are nationally and internationally recognized leaders in academic pediatric medicine, is supported by a large complement of pediatric, surgery, pathology, and radiology residents and fellows in all subspecialties and by an extensive staff of pediatric health professionals. CMH’s national prominence in clinical care and research provides fellows with a rich educational environment. A center of excellence for the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric cancers and blood diseases, CMH features inpatient and outpatient pediatric hematology-oncology and stem cell transplant facilities. CMH attracts children with rare malignancies and hematologic disorders as well as patients with the more common pediatric hematologic and oncologic disorders. Each year, approximately 70 percent of new pediatric cancer cases in Illinois are diagnosed at or referred to Children’s Memorial. More hemophiliacs and patients with hemoglobinopathies are seen at CMH than any other pediatric facility in Illinois, including more than 350 patients with bleeding disorders and more than 300 patients with sickle cell disease. The hospital’s comprehensive thalassemia program cares for the largest number of patients in the entire Midwest. A wide range of stem cell transplants are done at CMH including allogeneic and autologous, using bone marrow, peripheral blood stem cell, and umbilical cord blood donor sources. Inpatients with hematologic or oncologic diseases, who account for more than 1,500 hospital admissions each year, occupy a 22-bed unit, including six inpatient beds with laminar airflow capability for stem cell transplantation. Outpatient clinics, an ambulatory stem cell unit, the Chi-Sox Day Hospital, a pharmacy, and a clinical hematology laboratory are contiguous with the inpatient unit. CMH records more than 10,000 outpatient visits in the pediatric hematology-oncology-stem cell transplant clinics annually. Outpatients are seen each week in five half-day general oncology clinics, 10 half-day stem cell transplant clinics, one half-day comprehensive neuro-oncology clinic, one half-day long-term survivor clinic, one half-day general hematology clinic, and two half-day comprehensive hemoglobinopathy/coagulopathy clinics. Faculty members at CMH are actively involved in a wide range of clinical research studies. Ongoing clinical studies conducted through the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Consortium, NANT (New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy), the National Marrow Donor Program, and “in-house” protocols focus on the epidemiology of cancer, the biology and treatment of leukemias and solid tumors, novel approaches to stem cell transplantation, and late effects of treatment. The Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium is a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored consortium for developing novel therapies for pediatric patients with brain tumors, and ongoing studies at CMH include intraoperative radiation therapy for recurrent malignant brain tumors and anti-angiogenic therapy for brain stem gliomas. NANT is a national consortium that conducts Phase I trials for patients with neuroblastoma. The Stem Cell Transplant Program has more than 20 active clinical trials, including COG trials, in-house protocols, Pediatric Blood and Marrow Consortium trials, and National Marrow Donor Program trials, including trials with new ablative regimens for stem cell transplantation, use of tandem rescues for patients with high-risk neuroblastoma, use of innovative approaches to treat brain tumors with high-dose chemotherapy and stem cell rescue, and novel ways to prevent and treat graft-versus-host disease. Areas of specific clinical research for long-term survivors of childhood cancer include immune recovery following stem cell transplantation and osteopenia and dyslipidemia/obesity in long-term survivors. CMH participates in clinical research studies in hematology through the Thalassemia Clinical Research Network sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the Neurology-Hematology Consortium sponsored by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. Some of the studies focus on the efficacy and safety of newly developed clotting factor replacement products for hemophilia, the efficacy of primary clotting factor prophylaxis in the prevention of joint disease in hemophiliacs, and new strategies for immune tolerance in hemophiliacs with inhibitors. Multicenter studies of stroke morbidity and mortality in sickle cell disease as well as the efficacy of transfusions in patients with silent strokes are ongoing. CMH is currently the only pediatric center in the Midwest participating in international trials of a new oral chelating agent for transfusional iron overload and new treatments for Hepatitis C in thalassemia. CMH continues to be a primary site for confirmation, counseling, and initiation of treatment of infants identified through the statewide newborn screening program for hemoglobinopathies. Basic science and clinical faculty members with research expertise in developmental biology, neurobiology, disease pathogenesis, human and molecular genetics, and child health research, which includes population-based and clinical studies, have laboratories and offices in the Children’s Memorial Research Center (CMRC).
One of only a few institutions in the nation dedicated exclusively to pediatric research, CMRC is committed to clinical and basic science research that will lead to improved treatments, cures, and ultimately prevention of disease and other health problems that affect children. CMRC, a recently expanded state-of-the-art, 123,000-square-foot, five-story research facility is located across the street from CMH and includes laboratory space, shared research facilities, an epidemiology and statistics core, animal facilities, a transgenic and targeted mutagenesis facility, an automated DNA sequencing facility, and a multiphoton confocal microscope facility for visualizing signal transduction and gene regulation in living cells. Faculty members in the Division of Hematology-Oncology-Stem Cell Transplant have research laboratories in the developmental biology and disease pathogenesis programs at CMRC. Specific areas of active investigation by members of the division include studies of the roles of the developmental regulatory genes GLI1 and HOXA11 in cell transformation and megakaryopoiesis, respectively, studies of the developmental potential of bone marrow-derived stem cells, ex vivo marrow expansion, detection of minimal residual disease during therapy, and detection of tumor cell contamination in peripheral blood stem cells grafts in children with high risk neuroblastoma. In addition to CMRC, laboratory space exists in the Children’s Memorial Research Building contiguous with the hospital and houses the Stem Cell Transplant Clinical Research Laboratory. The clinical laboratory includes facilities for bone marrow processing and purging, cryopreservation, T-cell depletion, tissue culture, and flow cytometry. |
