Research

Fuller Goldsmith, 16, has always dreamed of being a top chef.

After winning the Food Network’s Chopped Jr. reality TV cooking competition, Fuller Goldsmith, 16, was well on his way to achieving his dreams of becoming a professional chef. It was a future that was soon in jeopardy when life for the aspiring chef took an uncertain, but all too familiar turn. In late 2018, Fuller learned his cancer had returned for a fourth time.

Having undergone treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) since age 3, Fuller was out of standard treatment options. Their local oncologist told the Goldsmiths about the cancer immunotherapy clinical trials at Seattle Children’s. He thought the experimental chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy, which engineers a patient’s own immune cells to target and eliminate cancer cells, might offer the best hope for Fuller. Read full post »

Drs. Debashree Goswami (front) and Nana Minkah are working with their Kappe Lab colleagues to develop a vaccine for malaria. New research published by Goswami and her teammates paves the way for a novel, next generation vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the deadliest form of malaria in humans.

In an unprecedented first, scientists at Seattle Children’s Research Institute have developed a genetically attenuated parasite (GAP) that arrests late in the liver stage of human malaria. Their findings published in JCI Insight pave the way for a novel, next-generation GAP vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the deadliest form of malaria in humans.

According to Dr. Debashree Goswami, a fellow in the Kappe Lab at the research institute’s Center for Global Infectious Disease Research and lead author of the paper, a vaccine candidate based on their findings has the potential to offer protection to those living in regions where the transmission of malaria is widespread throughout the population. Read full post »

Dr. Jane Buckner of the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason and Dr. David Rawlings of Seattle Children’s Research Institute are leading gene editing research to develop new therapies for autoimmune conditions like type 1 diabetes.

For much of the last decade, Dr. David Rawlings, director of Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s Center for Immunity and Immunotherapies, has dreamed of developing a therapy for children with type 1 diabetes that doesn’t involve insulin injections but uses a person’s own immune cells to target and treat the disease.

Now, new research and a fresh infusion of funding bring this dream closer to reality, and nearer to opening a first-in-human clinical trial of an experimental therapy at Seattle Children’s in collaboration with research partner Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI).

“What started as a dream is now within reach,” Rawlings said. “My hope is that our research will lead to a new treatment that turns off the destructive immune response leading to development of type 1 diabetes in children.” Read full post »

More than 50 research studies to understand, detect, treat and prevent the novel coronavirus in children and families have launched at Seattle Children’s since the virus emerged in late 2019. The following post is part of the “Quest(ion) for Discovery” series highlighting this research in progress and the search for answers that could result in major scientific breakthroughs that save lives and slow the spread of the virus.

When Dr. Janet Englund, a member of the Center for Clinical Translational Research at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, received news in late February that a Seattle Children’s patient had tested positive for the novel coronavirus and represented the first example of community transmission in Washington state, she knew things as we knew them were never going to be the same.

Englund, who has long studied respiratory viruses and their transmission in children and frequently provides her expertise as part of national scientific advisory panels, believed we were facing something very different from any pandemic Seattle – or the world for that matter – had ever seen before.

She and her collaborators quickly proposed supplements to their existing studies primarily focused on seasonal influenza, so they could begin to learn about how the new coronavirus impacts children. One study, which she discusses in greater detail here, asks: Are children making antibodies that will protect against future COVID-19 infections? Read full post »

More than 50 research studies to understand, detect, treat and prevent the novel coronavirus in children and families have launched at Seattle Children’s since the virus emerged in late 2019. The following post is part of the “Quest(ion) for Discovery” series highlighting this research in progress and the search for answers that could result in major scientific breakthroughs that save lives and slow the spread of the virus.

An expert in screen time for children, Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, leads a team of researchers out of Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development. In a recently published editorial in JAMA Pediatrics, Christakis argues that it’s critical to focus on overlooked decisions, such as the return to school, in the wake of the COVID-19 surge because of its lasting implications for children.

Here, he shares research his team has proposed to understand some of the effects of COVID-19 on child development and wellness while addressing the question: How might COVID-19 reshape this generation of children? Read full post »

The latest screen-time related research from Dr. Pooja Tandon, a child health and development expert at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, was inspired by her oldest son.

“When my son entered middle school, I learned that students in many middle and high schools were allowed to have their phones with them at all times,” Tandon said. “I looked into this a bit more and found that even in schools where policies limited use during class, cell phones could still be used unrestricted during lunch and recess.”

This struck Tandon, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, whose research focuses on promoting healthy active and outdoor play for children and teens.

“My fellow pediatricians and I follow guidelines that recommend children and teens enjoy two hours of age-appropriate recreational screen time a day,” she said. “Yet, many children may be spending most of their waking hours in school with what could be unsupervised and unrestricted access to their phones.” Read full post »

More than 50 research studies to understand, detect, treat and prevent the coronavirus in children and families have launched at Seattle Children’s since the virus emerged in late 2019. The following post is part of the “Quest(ion) for Discovery” series highlighting this research in progress and the search for answers that could result in major scientific breakthroughs that save lives and slow the spread of the virus.

At Seattle Children’s Research Institute, Dr. John Aitchison co-leads the Center for Global Infectious Disease Research, the largest pediatric infectious disease research group in the U.S.

Aitchison’s lab and a team of scientists from Rockefeller University are researching how nanobodies produced by a llama’s immune system can be used to develop a therapy that eliminates COVID-19 in humans. Here he answers the question: Do llama nanobodies hold the secret to fighting COVID-19 in humans? Read full post »

More than 50 research studies to understand, detect, treat and prevent the coronavirus in children and families have launched at Seattle Children’s since the virus emerged in late 2019. This is the first post in a new weekly series called “Quest(ion) for Discovery” highlighting this research in progress and the search for answers that could result in major scientific breakthroughs that save lives and slow the spread of the virus.

As the senior vice president and chief academic officer at Seattle Children’s, Dr. Leslie R. Walker-Harding helps set the vision for Seattle Children’s Research Institute, one of the top five pediatric research programs in the country. Here she addresses the question: Can a greater understanding of COVID-19 in children reduce the overall impact of the coronavirus?

Read full post »

Although children don’t typically fall seriously ill from the new coronavirus, doctors in Europe are now expressing concern that children with COVID-19 have developed mysterious symptoms that mimic those appearing with Kawasaki disease.

On the Pulse asked Dr. Michael Portman, pediatric cardiologist and director of the Kawasaki Disease Clinic at Seattle Children’s, to help break this emerging issue down for parents and caregivers. Read full post »

Eighteen months ago, Dr. Lynn Martin, an anesthesiologist and medical director of the ambulatory surgery center at Seattle Children’s, and his colleagues at the Seattle Children’s Bellevue Clinic and Surgery Center set out to reduce the use of opioids during outpatient pediatric surgeries, while maintaining or improving pain management and outcomes for patients. Ultimately, they accomplished much more by successfully ousting opioid use during surgeries.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drug overdose deaths continue to increase in the U.S. It is a problem Martin and his colleagues believe they can help address, which is what drove them to develop a novel initiative at Seattle Children’s to reduce opioids.

Martin and his colleagues completed their breakthrough quality improvement initiative to reduce opioid use and their findings were published in Anesthesia and Analgesia. Read full post »