|
|
 |
 | ||
|
|
| ||
|
Historic Milestones |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Children's Hospital Boston has been a leader in child health for more than 130 years. Below are some of Children's Hospital's recent research and clinical milestones.
1800s to 1930s | 1940s to 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1869
|
|
Children's Hospital Boston opens as a 20-bed facility at 9 Rutland Street in Boston's South End.
|
 |
|
|
1891
|
|
Children's establishes the nation's first laboratory for the modification and production of bacteria-free milk.
|
|
|
|
1920
|
|
Dr. William Ladd devises procedures for correcting various congenital defects such as intestinal malformations, launching the specialty of pediatric surgery.
|
|
|
|
1922
|
|
Dr. James Gamble analyzes the composition of body fluids and develops a method for intravenous feeding that saves the lives of thousands of infants at risk of dehydration from diarrhea.
|
|
|
|
1932
|
|
Dr. Louis Diamond identifies Rh disease, in which a fetus's blood is incompatible with its mother's. The mother produces antibodies against her child's blood, which damage the red blood cells and cause severe anemia, heart failure and brain damage. Diamond later develops a transfusion procedure that replaces the blood of a newborn affected by Rh disease.
|
|
|
|
1938
|
|
Dr. Robert Gross performs the world's first successful surgical procedure to correct a congenital cardiovascular defect, ushering in the era of modern pediatric cardiac surgery.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1947
|
|
Dr. Sidney Farber achieves the world's first successful remission of acute leukemia. He goes on to co-found the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
|
|
|
|
1954
|
|
Dr. John Enders and his colleagues win the Nobel Prize for successfully culturing the polio virus in 1949, making possible the development of the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Enders and his team went on to culture the measles virus.
|
|
|
|
1969
|
|
The New England Regional Infant Cardiac Program is established with Children's as its headquarters, providing advanced care for infants with congenital heart disease.
|
|
|
|
1971
|
|
Dr. Judah Folkman publishes "Tumor angiogenesis: therapeutic implications" in the New England Journal of Medicine. It is the first paper to describe Folkman's theory that tumors recruit new blood vessels in order to grow.
|
|
|
|
1978
|
|
Children's researchers develop genetic tests to diagnose thalassemia, a serious inherited blood disorder, in unborn children. A similar technique led to the development of prenatal tests for sickle cell anemia in 1982.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1983
|
|
Children's physicians report the first surgical correction of hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a defect in which an infant is born without a left ventricle. The procedure is the first to correct what previously had been a fatal condition.
|
|
|
|
1985
|
|
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute commits $17 million to help fund a major research program in molecular genetics.
|
|
|
|
1986
|
|
Children's surgeons perform the hospital's first heart transplant. Later in the year, a 15-month-old patient becomes the youngest person in New England to receive a heart transplant.
|
|
|
|
1986
|
|
Dr. Louis Kunkel and his research team identify the gene on the X-chromosome responsible for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The following year, Kunkel and Dr. Eric Hoffman identify the protein missing in patients with the disease, called dystrophin. Today, Kunkel and collaborators are using muscle stem cells to deliver normal copies of the gene and restore dystrophin to diseased muscles.
|
|
|
|
1987
|
|
The gene for a brain protein found in the degenerative nerve tissue of Alzheimer's patients is isolated and located on chromosome 21 by Dr. Rachael Neve.
|
|
|
|
1989
|
|
Researchers in Neurology and Genetics discover that beta amyloid, a protein that accumulates in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease, is toxic to neurons, indicating the possible cause of the degenerative disease.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1990
|
|
Dr. Joseph Murray, chief of Plastic Surgery emeritus, wins the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in organ transplantation.
|
|
|
|
1993
|
|
A team led by Dr. Carlo Brugnara discovers that a common antifungal medication, clotrimazole, prevents dehydration in red blood cells, a factor in sickle cell disease. A related compound is now entering phase III clinical trials in adults with sickle cell disease.
|
|
|
|
1997
|
|
Endostatin, one of the most potent inhibitors of angiogenesis, is discovered by Drs. Michael O'Reilly and Judah Folkman. In mice, endostatin has shown promise in slowing some cancers to a dormant state. Phase I clinical trials began at three centers in 1999.
|
|
|
|
1998
|
|
Children's Hospital Trust, the philanthropic resource for Children's Hospital Boston, is founded.
|
|
|
|
1998
|
|
Dr. Anthony Atala successfully transplants laboratory-grown bladders into dogs, a major advance in the growing field of tissue engineering.
|
|
|
|
1998
|
|
Dr. Evan Snyder clones the first neural stem cells from the human central nervous system, offering the possibility of cell replacement and gene therapies for patients with neurodegenerative disease, neural injury or paralysis.
|
|
|
|
1999
|
|
The FDA approves the use of CardioSEAL, a minimally invasive device invented by Dr. James Lock that closes holes in the hearts of the most seriously ill cardiac patients.
|
|
|
|
1999
|
|
Children's establishes its Advanced Fetal Care Center to provide diagnostic services, genetic and obstetrical counseling, and prenatal or immediate postpartum intervention for fetuses with complex birth defects.
|
|
|
|
1999
|
|
Dr. Larry Benowitz grows nerve cells in the damaged spinal cords of rats, a significant step in the treatment of spinal cord injuries. The next year, Benowitz discovers inosine, an important molecule in controlling axon regeneration in nerve cells.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2000
|
|
Children's performs its 100th heart transplant.
|
|
|
|
2000
|
|
Dr. Frederick Alt finds that end-joining proteins maintain the stability of DNA, helping to prevent the kinds of chromosomal changes that precede cancer.
|
|
|
|
2000
|
|
Children's Hospital Trust launches Cause for Wonder, a five-year, $300 million capital campaign, the largest in the hospital's history.
|
|
|
|
2001
|
|
Children's performs the world's first successful fetal repair of hypoplastic left heart syndrome in a 19-week-old fetus.
|
|
|
|
2001
|
|
Ophthalmologist Dr. Lois Smith demonstrates that insulin-like growth factor 1 is critical to blood vessel growth in the eye and that its loss in premature babies may lead them to develop retinopathy of prematurity. A Phase I clinical trial is now examining whether supplementing IGF-I in premature newborns will prevent the condition.
|
|
|
|
2002
|
|
Children's is recognized by the National Association of Children's Hospitals and the American Academy of Pediatrics as a national model in terrorism preparedness.
|
|
|
|
2002
|
|
Drs. Scott Pomeroy and Todd Golub use microarray gene expression profiling to identify different types of brain tumors and predict clinical outcome. This allows radiation and chemotherapy to be tailored to kill cancer cells while leaving healthy tissue alone.
|
|
|
|
2002
|
|
Dr. Nader Rifai co-authors a landmark study showing that a simple and inexpensive blood test for C-reactive protein, a substance produced in the liver when arteries become inflamed, is a more powerful predictor of a person's risk of heart attack or stroke than LDL cholesterol.
|
|
|
|
2003
|
|
The Karp Family Research Laboratories open at Children's, increasing the hospital's research space by more than 60 percent. The building is made possible by a generous gift from the Karp family, the largest ever made to Children's.
|
|
|
|
2003
|
|
Drs. Heung Bae Kim and Tom Jaksic develop, test and successfully perform the world's first-ever serial transverse enteroplasty (STEP) procedure, a potential lifesaver for patients with short bowel syndrome.
|
|
|
|
2003
|
|
Dr. George Daley and colleagues report creating a continuously growing line of embryonic germ cells, primitive cells that mature to become sperm or eggs. They also created male reproductive cells capable of fertilizing an egg to form an early embryo. These achievements may lead to a better understanding how reproductive cells form, and ways of ''reprogramming'' specialized cells to become more like embryonic stem cells.
|
|
|
|
2004
|
|
Children's surgeons perform New England's first multivisceral organ transplant when 11-month-old Abdullah Alazemi receives a stomach, pancreas, liver and small intestine from a single donor.
|
|
|
|
2004
|
|
Drs. Marsha Moses, Roopali Roy and colleagues show that an enzyme called ADAM 12, when found in urine, is a reliable indicator of the presence of breast cancer. Such "biomarkers" may indicate that a dormant, harmless tumor is about to begin growing and spreading, and could be used for screening patients and for guiding therapy.
|
|
|
|
2005
|
|
Dr. Stephen Harrison and colleagues show how a key part of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) changes shape, triggering other changes that allow the AIDS virus to enter and infect cells. The findings offer clues that could lead to new vaccine and treatment approaches.
|
|
|
|
2005
|
|
In the best-documented effort to date, Dr. Felix Engel, PhD, and Mark Keating, MD, successfully get adult heart-muscle cells to divide and multiply in mammals, the first step in regenerating heart tissue. They are now investigating whether their technique can improve heart function in animal models of cardiac injury.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Children's opens a state-of-the-art Proteomics Center, enabling researchers and clinicians to conduct large-scale, systematic studies of proteins and protein actions and interactions in the body.
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Drs. Dale Umetsu, Omid Akbari and colleagues report that a newly recognized type of immune cell, NKT, may play an important role in causing asthma, even in the absence of conventional T-helper cells. Moreover, NKT cells respond to a different class of antigens than are currently recognized to trigger asthma.
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
A report in The Lancet describes good outcomes in seven children with spina bifida who received laboratory-grown bladders, the first complete tissue-engineered organs to be implanted in human patients.
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Dr. Larry Benowitz and colleagues discover a naturally occurring growth factor called oncomodulin that stimulates regeneration in injured optic nerves, raising the possibility of treating blindness due to optic-nerve damage and the hope of achieving similar regeneration in the spinal cord and brain.
|
|
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Dr. Doug Cowan creates a tissue-engineered, electrically conductive implant for the heart. The implant, which functioned well in mice, is a first step toward using a patient's own cells to permanently treat complete heart block. Currently patients receive pacemakers, but these devices often fail over time, particularly in infants and small children, requiring repeat operations to replace them.
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Drs. Hongye Liu and Isaac Kohane demonstrate that gene-expression profiling can predict a lung cancer's prognosis. Cancers whose gene activity resembled that seen during early lung development had the worst prognosis, supporting the idea that cancer growth and embryonic development share common features. In a related study, Dr. Zoltan Szallasi show that a genetic profile indicating chromosomal instability can accurately predict clinical outcome in a broad range of cancer types.
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Dr. Mark Puder and colleagues discover that infants with intestinal failure can be saved from fatal liver complications simply by changing the kind of fat used in their parenteral nutrition solution. A randomized clinical trial will soon test whether the same substitution can prevent, not just reverse, liver disease, as well as other conditions such as lung injury and retinopathy of prematurity.
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Dr. Scott Armstrong and colleagues isolate rare cancer stem cells that cause leukemia in a mouse model of the human disease. The cells have proved surprisingly different from normal blood stem cells, a finding that may be good news for developing a drug that selectively targets them.
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is linked to abnormalities in the brainstem serotonin system, which regulates breathing, blood pressure, body heat and arousal. The study, by Dr. Hannah Kinney and colleagues, provides the strongest evidence yet that SIDS has a concrete biological basis. The findings could lead to a diagnostic test and perhaps a drug or other type of treatment to protect infants at risk for SIDS.
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Drs. Sean Wu, Stuart Orkin and colleagues discover a type of stem cell that is the precursor to at least two main cell types that form the heart. The discovery offers a new understanding of how the heart develops and brings researchers closer to being able to regenerate tissues to repair congenital heart defects and damage caused by heart attacks.
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Research at Children's and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Institute provides new insights into how glaucoma causes blindness, revealing the chain of cellular and molecular events that ultimately damage the optic nerve. The findings indicate possible targets for intervention, including tumor necrosis factor-alpha, which is already targeted by some existing drugs.
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Drs. Ofer Levy and Eva Guinan discover that patients undergoing chemotherapy before bone-marrow transplant lose a natural antibiotic protein called BPI that helps protect against graft-versus-host disease. The finding suggests that replacing BPI can prevent this devastating complication of bone marrow transplant, and a multicenter study is testing this idea in patients with cancer or blood diseases.
|
|
|
|
2006
|
|
Dr. George Daley and colleagues demonstrate that unfertilized eggs may be a viable source of customized embryonic stem cells that are compatible with the recipient's immune system. Their technique, if proven effective in humans, offers an efficient way of generating customized stem cell lines from women and would eliminate tissue matching and tissue rejection problems, a major obstacle to successful tissue transplantation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Recent Advances
|
|
|
|
|
|
Our History: Read all about it!
