The purpose of the proposed CHRC is to create a overall programmatic and physical environment within the Department of Pediatrics aimed at fostering the recruitment, training, career development and retention of new investigators as well as enhancing the ability to existing investigators to innovatively approach the study of pediatric disease. The CHRC aims to greatly strengthen and facilitate the Department's commitment to develop a highly competent interacting cadre of junior pediatric faculty that applies contemporary methods of molecular and structural biology to the study of the molecular mechanisms of pediatric disease. It will also facilitate faculty and research development in the new target areas of genetics, gene therapy and oncology. The CHRC builds on two Institution strengths: one, a well developed basic science faculty working on molecular genetics and cell and developmental biology, with an established postdoctoral training record and, two, the Pediatric Department residency program that now attracts a reasonable number of medical students with M.D.-Ph.D degrees or the equivalent in research experience. The productive and interacting faculty of scientific scholars that form the scientific base of the program were selected either because of established collaborations or the likelihood that their particular expertise could introduce new directions of approach to pediatric disease by translating advances in basic science knowledge and expression into clinical insights, and the reverse. The investigational focus is centered on delineating alterations in gene structure and expression responsible for mechanisms of disease evident at the level of the cell and organism. Selected groups of diseases under study range from those affecting neurodevelopment through to those involving infection, inflammation and immunity. The planning for the CHRC comes at a opportune and dynamic moment in this Department's history with the selection of a new chairman. Major goals in the departmental strategic plan include the development of a substantial faculty committed to basic clinical investigation. The CHRC occupies a central place in this plan as it will provide both the administrative mechanism for developing this new faculty and the environment in which it will develop. To this end the Institution has agreed to significantly increase research space for Pediatrics and to work with the new Chair to develop vital new resources to support promising new investigators. In addition, reflecting to its commitment to these objectives, the Institutions will treat the proposal under the category of a training grant, providing the CHRC with significantly increased resources through reducing the indirect costs from 70 to 8%. The opportunity afforded by the selection of a new Chair in pediatrics together with the combination of an award for the Columbia CHRC and a renewed Institutional commitment to both enhance existing financial support for junior investigators and expand research space should galvanize the plan to secure the research future of the Department and its ability to advance the study of the mechanisms of pediatric disease.
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