The Translational Core. The core includes 10,000-square-feet of tightly controlled "clean room" laboratory space. The facility can manipulate human cells outside of the body to create cell products for therapeutic use in specific diseases. It also produces viral vectors to allow the delivery of specific genetic information for treating disease The Genomics and Genetics Core. The core provides leading edge genomic analysis of blood cell diseases and determining the normal genetic traits of blood stem and progenitor (early stage) cells. The Mouse Xenotransplant/Transgenic Core. The core maintains specialized mouse strains and provides mouse transplant and transgenic services that allow scientists to study mouse models of human disease. The Flow Cytometry Core. This laboratory allows scientists to analyze and sort different types of blood cells.
The center designation comes after years of basic science discoveries in genetics and genomics have put researchers on the threshold of exciting new therapeutic approaches for blood cell disorders, according to Arnold Strauss, M.D., director of the Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation, chief medical director of the medical center, and chair of pediatrics at the UC College of Medicine.
"We are on the verge of being able to use novel interventions to treat and really cure disorders, such as sickle cell anemia, that severely impair normal lives for children and adolescents and cause premature death in young adults," Dr. Strauss said. "After 40 years of watching afflicted children suffer and die, I am incredibly excited that the time is arriving for their cure."
Helping secure the center of excellence designation is a decade of rapid growth in Cincinnati Children's research activities and in its reputation. The medical center is the nation's second largest pediatric research organization as measured by NIH funding, which totaled over $115 million in fiscal 2009 - an increase from $12.3 million just a decade ago. The medical center currently has 950,000 square feet of research laboratory space, with plans underway for an additional 300,000 square feet.
The expansion has included establishment of nearly two dozen research cores, with capabilities ranging from creating and maintaining stem cell lines to one of the largest academic bioinformatics and computing centers in the nation.
Source: Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center