Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital is launching a new research institute to enhance its research mission of improving children’s health through medical and scientific discovery.

The Johns Hopkins All Children’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Research will bring together researchers and trainees from multiple departments and institutes throughout the institution, whose academic work involves clinical/translational science.

Neil Goldenberg, M.D., Ph.D., associate dean for research at Johns Hopkins All Children’s and a St. Petersburg, Florida-based professor of Pediatrics and Medicine in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will serve as director of the new Institute.

“It’s tremendously exciting to be able to establish a research institute whose key goals are to strengthen multidisciplinary collaboration and mentorship in clinical/translational research across all existing institutes and departments at Johns Hopkins All Children’s, and to support interdisciplinary research between clinical/translational investigators and laboratory-based scientists institution-wide,” Goldenberg says.

In 2018, Johns Hopkins All Children’s similarly announced the establishment of a new Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, which has since become the primary “home” for basic science, and whose scientists are investigating the fundamental mechanisms of human health and childhood-onset disease.

The creation of the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Research builds upon a strong foundation in clinical/translational research that preceded, but has grown rapidly since, the hospital’s integration into Johns Hopkins Medicine in 2011. Clinical/translational researchers at Johns Hopkins All Children’s currently conduct more than 325 Institutional Review Board-approved research studies, including clinical trials that are evaluating potential new therapies for children with acute and chronic medical and surgical conditions, spanning nearly every clinical specialty in which the hospital provides care for children in the Tampa Bay community and beyond.

In the coming year, the hospital will roll out several research centers and programs within the new institute, addressing common themes that span Johns Hopkins All Children’s existing institutes and departments, including: early-phase clinical trials to study innovative pediatric uses of existing medications; research focused on pediatric health equity, in particular health care access and health outcomes; and education and training programs for the next generation of clinical/translational scientists focused on child health and disease.

“These centers and programs will serve to strengthen collaborations — and create new opportunities to collaborate – with colleagues locally at Moffitt Cancer Center and the University of South Florida, Johns Hopkins University faculty colleagues based in Baltimore, and our clinical/translational research colleagues at other institutions here in Florida, across the U.S., and internationally,” Goldenberg explains.

The institute will be integrated within the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), which receives about $15 million per year from the National Institutes of Health to support investigators as they move discoveries into practice. “Integration of our multiple programs with the new institute at Johns Hopkins All Children’s will provide greater opportunities for our researchers and the communities we serve to more creatively and efficiently develop new therapies that can improve health of children around the country,” says Daniel Ford, M.D., M.P.H., vice dean for clinical investigation and director of the Johns Hopkins ICTR.

The centers and programs within the new institute at Johns Hopkins All Children’s also will serve as scientific “hubs” for the development of innovative clinical/translational research studies, methods, and grant applications by its researchers and their collaborators in Baltimore and beyond, as well as the publication of original, peer-reviewed research manuscripts for dissemination of new scientific and medical knowledge.

George Jallo, M.D., vice dean and physician-in-chief at Johns Hopkins All Children’s and Hopkins professor of Neurosurgery, emphasizes, “The establishment of the new institute is not only an important step in the strengthening of academic integration between the Johns Hopkins Medicine campuses in Baltimore and the Johns Hopkins All Children’s campus here in Florida, but also a key step in the Johns Hopkins All Children’s journey toward pre-eminence among children’s hospitals regionally and nationally.”