The Yale Child Health Research Center

The Yale Child Health Research Center (YCHRC) is one of America's premier pediatric research centers. The missions of the YCHRC are twofold:

• To find causes and cures for illness affecting children and adolescents
• To develop leaders in pediatric research.

The YCHRC is comprised of seven MD and two PhD scientists with independent research programs. In addition, there are 11 post-doctoral research fellows, 8 research technicians, 2 graduate students and 6 undergraduate students in the YCHRC. Administrative support staff maintains the day-to-day operations the YCHRC, as well.

The research performed in the YCHRC is supported by different funding agencies. There are eleven major National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards to YCHRC investigators. Eight foundation awards, including those from the Donaghue Foundation and the American Heart Association, help support our facility.

The YCHRC is a hub of training in pediatrics. The YCHRC is home to one of twenty NIH sponsored Children's Hospital Research Centers. The goal of the centers is to develop faculty members for careers in pediatric research. To date the Yale CHRC program has supported 28 junior faculty members. Forty percent of these individuals have gone on to obtain NIH funding. We are especially proud that the Yale CHRC is the longest continuously funded CHRC in the nation.

The YCHRC is composed of several laboratories lead by clinical-scientists. Each of these investigators is nationally or internationally renown in their field:

• Dr. Clifford Bogue is a member of the Section of Critical Care Medicine. His laboratory focuses on understanding mechanisms of heart and liver development. Dr. Bogue's studies are leading to insights as to how liver and heart formation occurs. These studies may provide new insights into cause of congenital heart and liver disease.

• Dr. Michael Cappello is a member of the Infectious Diseases Section of Yale Pediatrics. Dr. Cappello's laboratory is trying to understand how parasitic infections impact maternal and child health. In addition, he has isolated novel proteins from parasites that may have potential use in the treatment of cardiovascular disorders and cancer.

• Dr. Lee Denson is a member of the Gastroentrology Section. Dr. Denson's research interest is in inflammatory bowel disease. He is working to develop new treatments that will help intestinal regeneration following injury.

• Dr. Ramsay Fuleihan is a member of the Section of Allergy and Immunology. Dr. Fuleihan is looking to learn how cells of the immune system develop from stem cells in the bone marrow and how a failure of this process leads to immune deficiency diseases that are characterized by a susceptibility to severe and recurrent infections. He has identified the genetic cause of the immune deficiency disease X-linked hyper IgM and is working to develop novel treatments for this disease.

• Dr. Jeffrey Gruen is a member of the Section of Perinatal Medicine. Dr. Gruen has a research program aimed at discovering why dyslexia occurs. With this research, Dr. Gruen hopes to find causes and potential ways to diagnose reading disability, which affects a large proportion of American school children.

• Dr. Margaret Hostetter, who is Chair of Pediatrics and Chief of the Section of Allergy and Immunology, has a laboratory that focuses on two major areas. Dr. Hostetter’s group has identified some mechanisms that contribute to the high risk of fungal infections in premature infants. She also is developing new and more effective vaccines that will prevent bacterial pneumonia.

• Dr. George Porter is a member of the Section of Cardiology. His laboratory focuses on studying how the heart develops. These studies may provide new insights into cause of congenital heart disorders.

• Dr. Scott Rivkees is a member of the Section of Endocrinology, and is the Director of the YCHRC. Dr. Rivkees’ projects involve examining the development of the circadian system, which regulates sleep-wake cycles. Dr. Rivkees also is examining causes of brain injury in developing infants. Members of Dr. Rivkees laboratory are also looking at how the heart forms which may lead to new insights into causes of congenital heart disease.

• Dr. Christopher Turner is a member of the Section of Endocrinology. Dr. Turner's projects involve determining mechanisms that lead to brain injury in infants. Dr. Turner is also the Director of the YCHRC Imaging Center, which provides sophisticated cell imaging microscopic equipment and technical support for the entire Department of Pediatrics.

• Dr. Zhiyong Zhao is a member of the Section of Endocrinology. His interests focus on heart and facial development. Dr. Zhao's studies have identified factors that influence heart and facial development. These may play a role in birth defects.

In addition to the ongoing work in the YCHRC, we are also developing new programs that are aimed at improving the training of tomorrow's leaders in pediatric research and expanding the scope of our research. Over the next year, the YCHRC will be hosting variety of research symposia. These meetings will involve research technicians, medical students, summer students, and pediatricians-in-training. We are developing research cores to integrate clinical-scientists with common interests, resulting in new thematic research programs.

Over the coming years, we anticipate that the YCHRC will become an even more dynamic center of pediatric research than it is now. We also anticipate that the fertile environment of the YCHRC will allow us to continue to train and develop the next generation of pediatric scientists.

Thank you,
Scott A. Rivkees, M.D.
Director, YCHRC
Associate Professor of Pediatrics