New Members American Pediatric Society, I-DECIDE, AHA Scientific Sessions, AI Model

 

In this week's research news, congratulations go out to the five physicians from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia elected to the American Pediatric Society, and a scientist recognized by the Foundation of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation for his work in prolonged disorders of consciousness. The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) funds the I-DECIDE trial, and a new AI model developed at CHOP improves processes required for spatial omics.

Five CHOP Physicians Selected to Join American Pediatric Society

The American Pediatric Society, one of the first and most prestigious pediatric organizations, elected five physicians from CHOP among their 98 new members for 2025. Members are nominated and elected due to their distinguished achievements as child health leaders, clinicians, policymakers, researchers, scholars, and teachers.

"These physicians are esteemed experts making a profound difference in the lives of children and adolescents," said Joseph St. Geme, MD, Physician-in-Chief and Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics. "This is a well-earned honor, truly fitting of their contributions."

Congratulations to the following CHOP inductees:

Clockwise from top left: Renata Arrington Sanders, MD, MPH, ScM; Nadia Dowshen, MD, MSHP; Joseph. Zorc, MD, MSCE; Rochelle Bagatell, MD; James Guevara, MD, MPH

• Rochelle Bagatell, MD, is a pediatric oncologist and Solid Tumor Section Chief who focuses on improving therapies for children with neuroblastoma.

• Nadia Dowshen, MD, MSHP, is an adolescent medicine specialist and Director of Adolescent HIV Services, with a research focus on developing and testing digital health interventions to reach, engage, and retain adolescent and young adults in care.

• James Guevara, MD, MPH, is a pediatrician and Director of Interdisciplinary Initiatives at PolicyLab whose research involves evaluating health inequities in early childhood development and behavioral problems.

• Renata Arrington Sanders, MD, MPH, ScM, Chief of the Craig-Dalsimer Division of Adolescent Medicine at CHOP and PolicyLab faculty member, studies adolescent and young adult sexual health, HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention interventions, and caring for LGBTQ+ youth.

• Joseph Zorc, MD, MSCE, an attending physician in the Division of Emergency Medicine, Director of Emergency Information Systems, and the Mark Fishman Endowed Chair in Genomics and Computational Science at CHOP, focuses on the intersection of interventional clinical research, quality improvement, and clinical informatics.

Read more in this CHOP news release.

PCORI Awards Funding for I-DECIDE Trial

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute awarded nearly $7 million in funding to researchers from CHOP and Seattle Children's Hospital to study the evidence and potential benefits of as-needed follow-up for children hospitalized with bronchiolitis. As-needed follow-up gives families instructions for symptom management and empowers them to decide if they need a follow-up visit with their primary care doctor.

"Hospitalization can be an incredibly stressful experience for families, and universally requiring all families to schedule follow-up visits with primary care providers after hospitalization can create unnecessary burdens," said co-principal investigator, Christopher Bonafide, MD, MSCE, and Research Director of General Pediatric Hospital Medicine at CHOP. "Evidence shows that many of these follow-up visits may not be needed."

The study called "Implementing Family Directed and Empowered Care with Infant Discharge Evidence (I-DECIDE)," will be conducted in more than 30 hospitals within the Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings Network, dedicated to improving the health and healthcare delivery for hospitalized children and their families. Researchers will compare the effect of moderate- versus high-resource implementation strategies of as-needed follow-up prescribing by hospitalists in the short- and long-term with a focus on adoption equity.

Advancing Rehabilitation of Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness

The Foundation for Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation awarded researcher Chong-Tae Kim, MD, PhD, in the Division of Rehabilitation Medicine at CHOP, with the Gabriella E. Molnar-Swafford Pediatric PM&R Research Grant at the American Academy of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Annual Assembly in San Diego this November.

His selected project, "Transcranial direct current stimulation for children with prolonged disorders of consciousness," seeks to verify if transcranial direct current stimulation – very small electrical stimulation on the scalp for a long period of 20 minutes – could facilitate recovery of prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDoC). PDoC refers to a continuous state of unconsciousness or minimal consciousness for at least four weeks following brain injury in children.

"The research idea is based on the fact that the brain is modulated by external electrical stimulation and that a low level of electrical stimulation for long duration is as effective as a high level of stimulation for short duration," Dr. Kim said. "For safety issues, high levels of electrical stimulation are only indicated for life threatening events such as cardiac arrest and severe mental illness."

The Gabriella E. Molnar-Swafford Pediatric PM&R Research Grant funds research topics related to pediatric rehabilitation medicine with a focus on physical disability to improve best practices, models of care, and patient outcomes.

CHOP Scientists Present Latest Research at AHA Scientific Sessions 2024

The American Heart Association held its annual Scientific Sessions in Chicago, Illinois this November, where CHOP scientists presented a total of 17 posters and abstracts, and gave six presentations and lectures.

Among those featured were Becky Josowitz, MD, PhD, a trainee working alongside Nancy Spinner, PhD, who presented a rapid fire oral abstract on adverse outcomes of fetuses with congenital heart disease and placental malperfusion.

Rachel Shustak, MD, a young faculty member and an attending cardiologist at CHOP, gave a rapid fire oral abstract on disparities in diagnosis and treatment of heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, which is a genetic disorder that causes high levels of cholesterol.

Andrew Freddo, MD, a cardiac fellow, presented a rapid fire oral abstract on survival outcomes of adults with Fontan circulation followed in an adult congenital heart disease center.

During a late-breaking session at the conference, Joseph Rossano, MD, MS, Chief of the Division of Cardiology, presented results from a first-of-its-kind, multicenter, Phase 1 gene therapy trial for Danon disease (DD), a rare, X-linked heart condition caused by a single gene mutation that affects several tissues and organ systems in the body. The research team found that a single infusion of RP-A501, an experimental adeno-associated virus-based gene therapy, could arrest and reverse underlying genetic, molecular, and cellular causes of DD. The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Rossano also was honored with a 2024 Top Principal Investigator Award from the Heart Failure Collaboratory (HFC) in collaboration with the AHA as part of the annual HFC Site-Based Research Awards. HFC is a consortium of stakeholders committed to improving the ecosystem of heart failure clinical trials.

New AI Model Programmed To Help Improve Cell Detection, Segmentation, Classification

A new computational tool for data analysis called CelloType developed by researchers at CHOP uses artificial-intelligence technology to advance spatial omics.

Spatial omics combines molecular profiling with spatial organization to map various types of healthy and diseased tissues at the cellular level. These detailed insights help researchers to better understand cellular interactions, tissue function, and disease mechanisms to inform precision medicine.

"We are just beginning to unlock the potential of this technology," said Kai Tan, PhD, the study's lead author and Director of the Center for Single Cell Biology. "This approach could redefine how we understand complex tissues at the cellular level, paving the way for transformative breakthroughs in healthcare."

As the critical first step of spatial omics data analysis, researchers undertake the tasks of cell segmentation (identifying cell boundaries) and classification (calling cell types). CelloType adopted a multi-task learning strategy that simultaneously integrated segmentation and classification. When compared to a typical two-stage approach that involves segmentation followed by classification, the study team demonstrated that CelloType was more efficient and accurate.

CelloType leverages transformer-based deep learning, which automates the analysis of high-dimensional data, enabling the model to capture complex relationships and context of both large and small cell structures. Researchers have free access to CelloType via open-source software in a public repository for noncommercial use. 

The findings were published in Nature Methods. Learn more in this CHOP news release.

ICYMI

Catch up on our headlines from our Nov. 22 In The News:

• Yael Mossé, MD, Receives a 2024 Penn Medicine Award of Excellence
• FDA Designations Aim to Streamline Gene Therapy Development for Extremely Rare Diseases
• Study Results Show Ultrasound Represents Reliable Imaging of Pediatric Kneecap Instability
• Community Health Workers Critical to Coordinated Asthma Care Across Lived Environments
• Preclinical Study Shows Emicizumab Could Improve Clotting for Hemophilia B Patients With Specific Variants

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