News | Page 13 | Pediatrics

Dr. Anjali Rajadhyaksha Awarded R01 to Identify New Mechanisms for Treating Opioid Dependence

January 23, 2023

Dr. Anjali Rajadhyaksha, professor of neuroscience in pediatrics and Associate Dean of Program Development and Dr. Francis Lee, interim Dean at Weill Cornell Medicine have been awarded an R01 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse their study entitled, “Circuit and Synaptic Mechanisms of Endocannabinoid-Opioid Crosstalk.”

The current opioid crisis has contributed to drug overdoses becoming the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50 years, with a constant increase in overdose deaths among adolescents. Opioids (morphine, oxycodone, fentanyl) remain the main line of medications for pain management, underscoring the urgent need for new non-opioid treatment options or adjuvant therapies that eliminate the addictive properties, but not the analgesic aspects of these medications.

Adolescence is an important developmental period between childhood and adulthood during which the brain is highly plastic and influenced by a variety of environmental factors. Exposure to substances of abuse during adolescence can impact the developing brain and lead to abnormalities in brain function including neurocognitive performance.

Two Weill Cornell Medicine Faculty Recognized with AAI Awards

January 18, 2023

This article was originaly published in the WCM Newsroom

Two Weill Cornell Medicine faculty members, Dr. Gregory Sonnenberg and Dr. Melody Zeng, are recipients of prestigious awards from the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) for their accomplishments in the field of immunology.

Dr. Sonnenberg is the 2023 recipient of the AAI-BD Biosciences Investigator Award, recognizing his outstanding contributions to the field of immunology as a mid-career scientist, and Dr. Zeng is a recipient of an AAI ASPIRE Award, recognizing her work as an early-career immunologist and potential for advancing the field of immunology. The AAI has been dedicated to advancing immunology to improve health and fostering development opportunities for immunologists since it was founded in 1913.

Dr. Kimberley Chien Promoted to Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics

January 10, 2023

The Department of Pediatrics is pleased to announce the promotion of Kimberley Chien, M.D. to Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, effective December 1, 2022.

Dr. Chien is an Associate Attending Pediatrician at New York-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital and New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She is board-certified in pediatrics and pediatric gastroenterology. She received a B.S. in Neuroscience at Tufts University and earned her medical degree at SUNY-Downstate Medical College of Brooklyn. She completed her pediatric internship and residency training at NYU School of Medicine and attended New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center to complete fellowship training in Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition.

10 Ways to Keep your Child’s Digestive Tract Healthy this Holiday Season

December 16, 2022

This article was originally posted in the WCM Patient News

Stuffing and candy and pie, oh my! ‘Tis the season for overeating, and for eating too many of the “wrong” foods without enough of the right ones to counterbalance them. Seasonal excess is tough enough for our adult digestive tracts to handle, but our children may have an even harder time digesting all those tempting, less-than-healthy holiday offerings.

The good news is that there are plenty of steps parents can take to foster healthy eating while indulging in just a few holiday treats and a limitless amount of family fun.

Dr. Kimberley Chien, assistant attending pediatrician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s Phyllis and David Komansky Center for Children's Health and assistant professor of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine, offers the following tips that will help keep your kids’ GI tracts in tip-top shape while building healthy eating habits for life.

Experimental Vaccines Offer Long-term Protection Against Severe COVID

December 2, 2022

This article was originally posted on the WCM Newsroom

In 2021, a group of scientists led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian reported that the Moderna mRNA vaccine and a protein-based vaccine candidate containing an adjuvant, a substance that enhances immune responses, elicited durable neutralizing antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 during infancy in pre-clinical research.

Now a follow-up study by the same group, published Dec. 1 in Science Translational Medicine, has found that the 2-dose vaccines still provide protection against lung disease in rhesus macaques one year after they had been vaccinated as infants.

Drs. Sheila Carroll and Patrick Flynn Appointed Interim Co-Chiefs of Pediatric Cardiology

October 17, 2022

We are pleased to announce Sheila J. Carroll, M.D. and Patrick A. Flynn, M.D. have been named Interim Co-Chiefs of Pediatric Cardiology, effective October 1, 2022. Dr. Carroll, who serves as the Director Fetal Cardiology, and Dr. Flynn, who serves as the Director of the Echocardiography Lab, will provide proven leadership and oversight for the Division’s activities, including liaising with Department administration and supporting the Department’s vision and missions in patient care, research, and education as well as quality, diversity, and inclusion.

We are grateful for the excellence and innovation of current chief Dr. Ralf Holzer. Under Dr. Holzer’s leadership from 2017 to 2022, the Division dramatically grew its pediatric cardiac catheterization program, expanded its clinical Pediatric Cardiology practice to Lower Manhattan, strengthened relationships with partner departments and institutions, and achieved the first premature infant transcatheter PDA closure in Manhattan. We wish Dr. Holzer well in his future endeavors.

Karam, Nellis, Receive R34 Award for Platelet Transfusion Strategies Pilot Study

September 28, 2022

This article was originally posted in the Yale Medicine Newsroom.

In a first of its kind pilot study, Oliver Karam, MD, PhD, chief of pediatric critical care at Yale School of Medicine, and Marianne Nellis, MD, MS, associate professor in pediatric critical care at Weill Cornell Medicine, have been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study different platelet transfusion thresholds for children supported by ECMO machines (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation). The ECmo hemoSTAtic Transfusions In Children (ECSTATIC) pilot trial will test two different platelet transfusion strategies, based on two different platelet count thresholds in critically ill infants and children.

Patients have received blood transfusions since as far back as 1820 but they became more widely used on the battlefield during World War I. Ever since, people have been giving and receiving blood, but there are relatively few studies to help doctors determine when and how blood products may be used most effectively.

Understanding Polio's Emergence in New York

September 27, 2022

This article was originally posted in the WCM Newsroom.

Unlike COVID-19 or the flu, polio is entirely and permanently preventable. In fact, until this year, there had not been one case of polio that originated in this country since 1979. A case in 1993 was brought to these shores by someone who had traveled to a country where the disease was endemic.

As long as you and your children are vaccinated, you have nothing to worry about. But if you are unvaccinated or under-vaccinated, doctors and public health officials urge you to waste no time in getting the polio vaccine, which confers lifelong protection against a potentially disabling disease.

The public health picture

A handful of polio-caused paralysis cases in New York, London and Jerusalem may seem minor compared to the massive global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But in public health terms, the recent polio outbreak is anything but minor. That’s because the poliovirus causes paralysis in fewer than 1 in 200 of the people it infects, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Think of the one case of paralysis in New York’s Rockland County as the tip of a very large iceberg.

The National CMV Foundation Awards Claire Otero Funding for CMV Vaccine Development Research

September 15, 2022

Ms. Claire Otero, a graduate assistant in Pediatrics, has been awarded a grant from the National CMV Foundation for her study, “Pre-clinical assessment of HCMV viral Fc receptors as vaccine targets.” The study aims to improve vaccine immunogenicity by targeting proteins expressed by cytomegalovirus (CMV) that interfere with key antibody responses.

CMV is the most common congenital infection, leading to a high burden of hearing loss and neurologic impairment in many affected infants. However, a vaccine against CMV has yet to be licensed, in part due to unclear immune correlates of protection. Recent work has implicated Fc mediated antibody effector functions (aka non-neutralizing antibodies) in prevention of placental CMV transmission.

This is a proof-of-concept study to define the immunogenicity of CMV viral Fc receptors (vFcRs), which function to inhibit Fc-mediated antibody responses. The overall goal is to improve Fc mediated antibody responses against standard vaccine antigens by targeting one or more vFcRs via active vaccination.

Dr. Oleh Akchurin Awarded Grant to Identify Novel Actionable Drivers of Anemia in Children with Chronic Kidney Disease

September 14, 2022

Oleh Akchurin, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Director of the Physician Scientist Training Program in Pediatrics has received funding for his study, “Role of myeloid cells in the pathophysiology of anemia in children with chronic kidney disease” from the Sy Syms Foundation and Van Pelt/Bass Foundation.

Macrophages are known to play a major role in iron metabolism, as evident from non-kidney related pre-clinical and patient-oriented studies. At the same time, disruptions in iron metabolism play a critical role in the development of anemia in children with chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, the role of macrophages, and their precursors, monocytes, in the development of anemia in children with CKD remains poorly understood. In this study, stemming from his previous work, Dr. Akchurin will test how the changes in monocyte/macrophage behavior in CKD affect the production and survival of red blood cells. His research team will specifically focus on the function of ferritin in macrophages in monocytes.