Partnership aims to push pediatric research forward
Following the grand opening of its new $635-million facility, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announced a partnership to create a new research center to develop medical devices for children in conjunction with USC.
Team effort · USC programs, institutes and faculty from the Health Sciences Campus will partner with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. - Dieuwertje Kast | Summer Trojan
Pediatric medical device development often lags behind adult device development as a result of various economic, clinical and regulatory problems, according to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
The partnership hopes to ease these concerns as there is an increasing need for children’s medical devices as they differ from adults in terms of size and anatomy.
USC and Children’s Hospital will combine forces among programs, institutes, faculty and students in the new partnership.
“There currently exists a need for novel medical devices specifically designed for [children], as well as for the adaptation and validation of existing adult devices for pediatric use,” Chester Koh, co-director of the new Center for Technology and Innovation in Pediatrics, said in a statement.
Through a “topic-focused, systems-oriented approach,” the center looks to overcome these issues. CTIP will aim to foster innovative pediatric device projects and connect both internal and external resources and people to support the development of such devices.
“Our long-term plans are for the CTIP to sustain a productive pipeline of new pediatric devices at Children’s Hospital and USC so that we can make a difference in the lives of patients right now,” said Brent Polk, chair of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine, told Los Angeles Business.
Work by the Children’s Hospital and the UC San Francisco recently identified a protein that might explain why treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common type of childhood cancer, is ineffective for some children.