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Researcher | Research Overview

The Randolph Lab studies the immunobiology of critical illness in children with a focus on life-threatening and fatal infections and acute lung injury. Our long-term goal is to identify new diagnostic tests and therapies that could restore health more rapidly and decrease morbidity and mortality. Our laboratory focuses on clinical-translational research in the areas of the immune response of pediatric patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome and/or overwhelming sepsis, and on identifying genomic pathways that influence disease susceptibility and/or severity. Dr. Randolph founded the Pediatric Acute Lung Injury and Sepsis Investigator’s Network in 2002 (https://www.palisi.org/) and was the Chair for its first 8 years. PALISI is a voluntary clinical-translational research consortium that now includes 80 pediatric intensive care units across the U.S. and Canada.

The PALISI Network has published over 175 clinical and translational studies in critically ill children, including multiple landmark randomized clinical trials published in NEJM and JAMA. In 2008, Dr. Randolph developed the Pediatric Intensive Care Influenza (PICFLU) Study Group within PALISI with a grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Public Health Genomics division to identify genes underlying influenza virus susceptibility and severity. Additional funding was received to increase enrollment during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. In 2010, National Institute of Health National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded PICFLU to study the genetic epidemiology and immune response to life-threatening and fatal influenza infection in children and young adults. The PICFLU group has received over $13 million in total from multiple sources including from Genentech Omni Biomarkers program to evaluate lipid mediators of inflammation in influenza infected patients and from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to identify genes that are expressed in influenza infected children who develop multiple organ dysfunction syndrome and/or immunoparalysis. Dr. Randolph is also on the medical advisory boards for Families Fighting Flu and for the ARDS Foundation. For more information about the PICFLU network, visit our website http://picflu.org.

Researcher | Research Background

Dr. Randolph graduated from Stanford Medical School and completed her pediatrics residency and critical care fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. At UCSF she completed research fellowships at the Institute for Health Policy Studies and at the Cardiovascular Research Institute. She has a Master of Science degree in biomedical informatics from the University of Utah. She has designed and implemented clinical decision support tools for guiding care of mechanically ventilated patients and worked with trainees to use large datasets to answer important clinical questions about clinical outcomes and use of therapies in children. Dr. Randolph also performs clinical research to advance patient safety and quality in the Medical Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Boston Children’s Hospital with a focus on optimizing methods of liberating children from mechanical ventilator support and improving outcomes of children who become critically ill after stem cell transplantation.

Selected Publications

  1. Randolph AG, Wypij D, Venkataraman ST, Hanson JH, Gedeit RG, Meert K, Luckett PM, Forbes P, Lilley M, Thompson J, Cheifetz IM, Hibberd P, Wetzel R, Cox PN, Arnold JH. Effect of mechanical ventilator weaning protocols on respiratory outcomes in infants and children - A randomized controlled trial. Journal of the American Medical Association 2002; 288: 2561-88.
  2. Randolph AG, Gonzales CA, Cortellini L, Yeh TS. Growth of pediatric intensive care units in the United States from 1995 to 2001. Journal of Pediatrics 2004; 144: 792-98
  3. Guidelines for the prevention of intravascular catheter-related infections - art. no. e51. Pediatrics 2002; 110: E51.
  4. Randolph AG, Lange C, Silverman EK, Lazarus R, Silverman ES, Raby B, Brown A, Ozonoff A, Richter B, Weiss ST. IL12B gene is associated with asthma. Am J Hum Genet 2004:75;709-715.

 

Researcher | Publications