MGfC Celebrates 9th Annual Research Day

Mass General for Children (MGfC) hosted its 9th annual Research Day on March 28, 2017, with innovative presentations, speakers and poster sessions. The event celebrated the pioneering research of investigators throughout MGfC whose discoveries help to better understand childhood disease.

“This is an incredible time for science with advances being made every day,” said Ronald Kleinman, MD, Physician-in-Chief of MGfC and chief of Partners Pediatrics. “MGfC and Mass General are unique in the breadth and depth of science and research. The level of research being done here at this institution is extraordinary.”

This year, there were 100 research abstracts submitted, which is a record number, said Kleinman. MGfC and Massachusetts General Hospital are also among the top five in the country for the largest portfolio of child-health related research at children’s hospitals.

The keynote address, “Nature, Nurture and Mental Illness,” was given by Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD, psychiatrist and the MGH Trustees Endowed Chair in Psychiatric Medicine at Mass General. Smoller is also the director of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit and Omics Unit at Mass General and an associate member of the Broad Institute.

Other MGfC faculty were featured in presentations, including Christina Faherty, PhD, of the Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center, Charumathi Baskaran, MBBS, of Pediatric Endocrinology, and Amy M. Yule, MD, of the Department of Psychiatry.

Kleinman also presented the winners for top abstract. Each winner received a travel award to a national meeting in their field. Winners included:

• Hongmei Mou, Vladimir Vinarsky, Purushothama Rao Tata et al
  “Dual SMAD signaling inhibition enables long-term expansion of diverse epithelial basal cells”

• Vibha Singhal, Karen Campoverde Reyes, Kathryn Ackerman, Alexander Toth, Madhusmita Misra
  “Prospective Changes in Bone in Adolescent and Young Adult Oligo-amenorrheic and Eumenorrheic Athletes and Non-Athletes”

• Joseph Biederman, Yuwen Hunga, Zeynep M. Sayingina, Dina Hirshfeld-Becker, Mai Uchida, Anna-Maria Kirova, Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, John D. E. Gabriele
  “Impaired Frontal-Limbic White Matter Maturation in Children at Risk for Major Depression”