171 Ashley Ave.
Charleston, SC 29425
843-792-1414
800-424-MUSC
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February 2007
Letter From Our Chair
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L. Lyndon Key, MD
Professor and Chairman
Department of Pediatrics |
Dear faculty, Children's Hospital staff and other friends,
Dr. Paul Darden will be heading our effort to obtain a Child Health Research Career Development Award (K12) grant. This is an educational grant that will provide training for basic science-oriented clinicians. It will function similarly to the program developed in the Academic Generalist Program through our clinical masters that helps to develop clinical trialists. In recent years, we have put together a team of scientists in the Darby Children's Research Institute (DCRI) who do basic science research and train our fellows and junior faculty how to develop funded programs. Our success has been greatly enhanced by the recruitment and expansion of several programs.
We have a number of superb mentors who have helped us to develop the research careers of our faculty. The two premier groups who have provided help in mentoring junior faculty over the years have been Dr. Inderjit Singh and Dr. Bruce Hollis.
Inderjit Singh, PhD, began his pediatric research career at Johns Hopkins under the mentorship of Dr. Hugo Moser, the preeminent clinician working on understanding Adrenoleukodystrophy. During his work with Dr. Moser, Dr. Singh discovered that rather than a mitochondrial defect, this severe debilitating illness was the result of a peroxisomal enzyme defect. Dr. Singh has been working in our department of pediatrics since 1984 and has built a nationally recognized program in neuroprotection and metabolism. He is a winner of the Javitz Award, an award given to honor an investigator who has had continuous R01 funding and who has the best grant that year in neuroscience.
Dr. Bruce Hollis attended Ohio State University, received his PhD from University of Geulph in Ontario, Canada. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Case Western Reserve. Dr. Hollis has been a leader in the development of assays to measure hormones that regulate bone formation and turnover. In recent years, he has developed a strong collaboration with Dr. Carol Wagner, allowing them to define the needs of vitamin D in neonates and pregnant mothers. These studies have provided about $5 million in grant funding.
Dr. Singh has been actively working with faculty to develop programs of tissue protection. He worked with neonatologist Doe Jenkins, MD, to develop a program of neuroprotection of the brain in the fetuses of mothers with chorioamnionitis. This work builds upon Dr. Singh's work in neuroinflammation in Adrenoleukodystrophy and multiple sclerosis treatment. In both of these conditions, improved function was demonstrated in patients receiving statins (usually used for lowering cholesterol, but now are being used to reduce inflammation).
You may have heard commercials from Pfizer suggesting that their statin reduces inflammation. The beginning of this understanding was developed in the neuroscience program at MUSC. MUSC has used this information in developing an RO1 grant from the FDA with Steven Willi, MD, of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Dr. Willi was a faculty member at MUSC until 2004 and is now the director of the diabetes program at CHOP.
Dr. Singh is also helping Dr. Maryellen Cavalier to develop a new strategy for reducing vascular disease by blocking adhesion proteins in Sickle Cell Disease for which South Carolina has one of the highest rates of disease per capita in the nation.
Dr. Sakamuri Reddy was our first major recruit to the DCRI and is an accomplished mentor, working with Dr. Rimon Youssef, a fellow in pediatric endocrinology. He has multiple R01s and will be a strong part of mentoring individuals who are working with me, Dr. William Ries, and Dr. Madyastha in developing laboratory skills to investigate questions of basic bone biology.
In putting together the Child Health Research Career Development Award, we will need to commit resources to develop and augment the number of trainees. To this end, we will commit in year one of the program, a position that will be funded by our department. This departmental commitment will guarantee two years of funding for the first scholar and an additional position for our program while we are building up to the maximum number of trainees that will be slated for grants under the K12 program. If funded this would allow us to have two trainees in year one of the grant, providing up to a total of three trainees.
The department of pediatrics has already committed a major amount of funding to creating the DCRI. The goal of this institute is to provide investigators the laboratory space and equipment to develop basic research programs that will lead to new cures in the most important disease in children. The K12 grant would allow us to begin recruiting and training young clinicians who have completed their fellowship training and who will turn basic science into clinical miracles. This will help us to recruit from a larger pool of clinical fellows whose career plans include laboratory research. This new direction will be led by Dr. Inderjit Singh and Dr. Paul Darden and as program directors. Dr. Bernie Maria, executive director of the DCRI, will be the recruiter of mentors and mentees to make this program work. This is a bold initiative, but should help every fellowship program and field of work in the department where basic science is the basis for developing cures.
We will be contacting many of you who are already involved in mentoring. In the past, space was the new frontier for pediatrics. Today, the new frontier is knowledge and accomplishment.
Sincerely,
L. Lyndon Key, MD
Chair, Department of Pediatrics
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