Fulfilling our promise to pursue the knowledge to advance pediatric medicine

One of our promises to the children we serve is to pursue the knowledge to advance pediatric medicine at Comer Children's. Our physician-scientists are currently involved with hundreds of research studies and clinical trials that are increasing our understanding of pediatric disease and its treatment. These studies are also helping to shape national standards of care for infants to young adults.

Our researchers are among the first in the country to examine the impact of a healthy microbiome on early brain and intestinal development. Neonatologist Erika Claud, MD, says the key point about the microbiome is that it’s modifiable.

“If we carry this research far enough, we will be able to identify interventions for individual children to improve their long-term outcomes,” she said. Learn more about the research being done in her lab.

Read about other ways we're keeping this promise:

• We are discovering how epileptic seizures are sustained and how, in turn, physicians might learn to stop them.
• Our researchers are studying how injury to the prenatal and perinatal brain makes it susceptible to long-term impairment, with the hope of developing therapies to avoid such damage.
• Our new pediatric cancer data commons is making more patient data accessible to cancer researchers.
• We are identifying children with Crohn’s disease who will benefit from early, intensive treatment.
• We are looking at a gene’s role in heart development and how its mutation causes congenital heart disease—information required to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.