New Cincinnati Children's research wing is big news for medical innovation

It’s been a big year for growth and innovation at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. The highest-profile news was the June opening of the new Clinical Sciences Pavilion at the hospital’s main Avondale campus, a $205-million 15-story tower that became home base for its clinical trials.
 
“This new facility will significantly expand our initiatives in basic, translational, clinical, quality improvement and population-health based research,” says Margaret Hostetter, MD, chair of pediatrics and director of the Research Foundation at Cincinnati Children’s. “We’re now better positioned for future growth in exploring critical areas such as new diagnostics, targeted therapies and the root causes of infant mortality and pediatric disease.”
 
One of the main challenges of pediatric medicine is that so many childhood diseases are rarer than adult diseases and therefore less is known about how best to treat and cure them. So the work being done at Cincinnati Children’s accompanying research tower, opened in 2007, is incredibly important to improving patient care and outcomes.
 
Still, the new discoveries and innovations must be tested and translated into treatments in order to work for patients. That’s the work being done at the Clinical Sciences Pavilion.
 
Situated symbolically and functionally between the research building and the main hospital, the pavilion is designed to allow researchers and clinicians to collaborate on developing innovations into treatments through serving patients in clinical trials.
 
This process of translating innovations from the lab bench to the bedside isn’t new to the medical center, which is one of the top three pediatric research institutions in the country. About 40-60 percent of what Cincinnati Children’s does is centered around research and the development of new treatments, which fits well in the larger Cincinnati innovation ecosystem.
 
Some of the research done at Cincinnati Children’s has been successfully translated into tools for care and then brought to the market. Some of those tools have even launched startups of their own.
 
One of the best known is Assurex Health in Mason, which uses pharmacogenomics to help patients determine the best drug treatments based on genetic factors. The company’s GeneSight test technology was developed based on research conducted at Children’s and the Mayo Clinic.
 
Of course, in addition to companies that have started thanks to Cincinnati Children’s research, the medical center itself is attracting talent from all over the world.

The Clinical Sciences Pavilion alone houses more than 1,500 physicians, scientists and support staff. Its opening bolsters Cincinnati’s medical technology innovation sector and provides researchers with a unique opportunity to work in an open, collaborative environment that integrates the steps between lab research and patient care.