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Research

Research

Overview

The road to improved diagnostics, more effective treatments and cures is paved by rigorous research.
Research for chILD is particularly expensive and challenging. First, chILD diagnoses are rare. Secondly, with its many variations, chILD is not a single diagnosis, so more money is needed to investigate all of the processes that lead to its many forms. Fortunately, there is a lot of crossover in our efforts, and by building a strong research infrastructure we can make a difference for all of our chILD patients and their families.

The Children’s Interstitial Lung Disease Research Network (chILDRN)
chILDRN is a multidisciplinary group of pulmonary, neonatal, radiology, pathology and genetic experts all working together to discover better diagnostics, underlying causes, improved treatments, and ultimately cures for all forms of chILD. This network has done amazing work with very limited funding. chILDRN consists of multidisciplinary care experts with 8 Centers of Excellence and 9 satellite centers throughout the country. For information about specific centers, see Find a specialist.

chILDRN achievements:

  • Created a national web-based database to collect research information that is now being used across the country.
  • Published new standards for clinical care through the American Thoracic Society (ATS).
  • Ongoing genetic research at many centers in the network. This work is looking for genetic causes of many forms of chILD in individual families, disease groups and in family pedigrees.
  • Identifying biomarkers. Biomarkers are measurable indicators for diseases like measuring proteins in proteomics, and will be increasingly important in diagnostic testing, discovering possible drug targets, and measuring treatment outcomes.
  • Performing stem cell research on chILD disorders for new understandings of mechanisms and treatments.
  • Ongoing collaboration with our international chILD organizations to develop partnerships with the International chILD community. These collaborations will be important in future longitudinal studies and clinical trials.