Research

Pictured from left to right: Yu Chen, Malika Hale and Christopher Thouvenel of the Rawlings lab at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

For close to a decade the labs of Dr. David Rawlings at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and Dr. Marion Pepper at the University of Washington have collaborated on a project studying the immune response in malaria infections.

As the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the U.S., they turned their expertise and the techniques pioneered for malaria to a new line of inquiry: Did mild infection from the new coronavirus stimulate the immune system to generate antibodies that would offer future protection from the virus? And if so, could they engineer those neutralizing antibodies in the lab to develop potent new therapeutic options?

Rawlings, the director of the Center for Immunity and Immunotherapies at Seattle Children’s and a professor of pediatrics at UW, discusses their encouraging findings now published in Cell. Learn why he says their research is good news for efforts to control COVID-19 and what’s next for his lab. Read full post »

This year has been filled with unprecedented challenges – physically, mentally, financially – and families are looking forward to putting 2020 behind them. As we collectively usher in a new year, it’s an opportune time to think about small changes we can make to better children’s health in 2021.

Dr. Pooja Tandon, a researcher in the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development, says this year has caused all kinds of disruptions to children’s lives, unlike anything we’ve seen before. Routines have been shattered, physical activity has decreased, sleep has been affected and the hardships of the year like uncertainty and isolation have impacted children’s mental health.

“Many things are hard right now,” Tandon said. “But for the things we have control over, we can make little changes that can promote health.”

Below, three experts break down three key areas to help support better health in 2021 – physical activity, sleep and nutrition. Read full post »

Colton Iverson holds a photo of his older sister, Cody. Photo courtesy Copper Ridge Photography.

Before his first breath, Colton Iverson had already received the gift of a lifetime. Just days old, he became the youngest patient to go on a drug recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of a life-threatening genetic condition called very long-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, or VLCAD, deficiency.

For his parents, the hope it inspired did not come without heartache.

“Colton wouldn’t be here today without our first born, his older sister Cody,” said his mom, Lisa Iverson.

A few days after coming home as excited new parents of a healthy baby girl with an Apgar score of 10, Cody went lifeless in Lisa’s arms one morning. She and her husband, Ty Iverson, rushed Cody to their local hospital in northeastern Washington.

“They did everything they could to save her and they couldn’t,” Lisa said. “For about week, we had no idea what happened to Cody.”

On the day of Cody’s service, the Iversons heard from their family medicine doctor, Dr. Geoffry Jones.

“As we were driving home, I remember the exact spot on the road when we got the call from Dr. Jones,” Lisa said. “He said her newborn blood test showed she had a genetic condition called VLCAD. He recommended we get in touch with a specialist at Seattle Children’s to learn more.” Read full post »

A newly developed cell-free test can rapidly detect COVID-19 neutralizing antibodies and could aid in vaccine testing and drug discovery efforts.

When Dr. Stephen Smith of Seattle Children’s Research Institute came down with muscle aches, gastrointestinal distress and a sudden loss of smell in late February, he suspected he had COVID-19. The testing criteria had yet to be expanded to include individuals with Smith’s symptoms and so he did what many scientists with his expertise would do: he developed a way to test himself.

The fruits of his curiosity, now published in the The Journal of Infectious Diseases, offer a reliable way to quantify whether an individual has neutralizing antibodies that could prevent the novel coronavirus from infecting cells using a method that is more broadly applicable than those currently available.

Read full post »

Emily Caveness, 9, had always been a very active sleeper. When her lack of restful sleep started disrupting her social and school life, her parents sought the help of sleep medicine experts at Seattle Children’s where they first learned of restless sleep disorder in children.

An international panel of sleep experts is adding a new pediatric sleep disorder they call restless sleep disorder, or RSD, to parents’ and pediatricians’ radars.

Led by Seattle Children’s pediatric sleep specialist, Dr. Lourdes DelRosso, the group shares their consensus on a medical definition of RSD in a new paper published in Sleep Medicine. Known to occur in children 6-18 years old, RSD can lead to attention impairment, mood and behavioral problems and other issues at home and school due to poor sleep quality.

“For many years, those of us in sleep medicine have recognized a pattern of sleep that affected a child’s behavior but didn’t fit the criteria for other known sleep disorders or conditions linked to restless sleep like obstructive apnea or restless legs syndrome,” DelRosso said. “This work provides consensus on a definition and diagnostic criteria for RSD, offering a new tool to help more children suffering from restless sleep.” Read full post »

Greta Oberhofer, now 7 years old, was the first patient under age 2 included in Seattle Children’s cancer immunotherapy clinical trials. Her parents once considered hospice care for their 13-month-old daughter. Now, Greta has been in remission for six years.

In the fall of 2013, Maggie and Andy Oberhofer watched their tiny, 8-month old daughter, Greta, fight for her life in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, Oregon.

Greta had just been through a bone marrow transplant to treat her highly aggressive leukemia. Shortly after, she took a turn for the worse and spent a perilous month in the PICU.

Greta eventually recovered from the transplant and was able to go home, but the family’s reprieve only lasted three months. In March 2014, Greta’s cancer relapsed. Her chance of survival was now 10% or less.

Her parents couldn’t imagine dragging Greta through another bone marrow transplant, so they began to consider end-of-life care for their 13-month-old daughter.

“It was gut-wrenching, knowing her odds were so low,” Maggie said. “We were preparing ourselves to say goodbye to her.”

That’s when they learned about a new option — a cancer immunotherapy trial at Seattle Children’s. Read full post »

Recently appointed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee for Human Research Protections (SACHRP), Dr. Douglas Diekema is a passionate champion for the patients and families who participate in research studies. Here, Diekema is photographed enjoying another passion: hiking and mountaineering.

As a newly appointed member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee for Human Research Protections (SACHRP), Dr. Douglas Diekema has always had a passion for interpreting and applying the regulatory laws for research involving human subjects to support the children and families that participate in research at Seattle Children’s.

Although he just assumed his role on the national committee that guides medical research activity across the U.S. this July, Diekema is no stranger to research oversight: he has served as the chair of Seattle Children’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the last two decades. In his time as chair, he’s witnessed Seattle Children’s Research Institute grow from a fledgling initiative into the burgeoning enterprise it is today, overseeing hundreds of research studies across nearly every pediatric specialty.

Here, Diekema reflects on what he’s most looking forward to as a member of SACHRP and why it’s very likely you’ve never heard of an IRB before. Read full post »

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 »