Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland

Partner Profile

Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland (CHRCO) is a 198 bed paediatric facility that provides comprehensive patient care, education to 70 paediatric residents, and supports basic and clinical research.  CHRCO has the largest hemoglobinopathy program in the western United States and serves paediatric and adult patients referred from Alaska to San Diego, California.  In 1995, a paediatric clinical research center was established as a satellite of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). This unit provides infrastructure for clinical research activities, research nursing effort, ancillary laboratory tests, biostatistical coordinators, a full-time research scientist/lab technician, and a biostatistician. The CTSI satellite is located on the first floor of the Outpatient Center. Occupying approximately 1000 sq. ft of space, the CTSI includes 6 offices, 2 exam rooms, and a waiting area for subjects.
The Department of Haematology/Oncology (head: Dr. Elliott Vichinsky) offers several comprehensive programs focusing on blood disorders. The department operates an outpatient clinic, has a 24-bed inpatient unit and a 25-bed day hospital. The outpatient area has 8 exam rooms, a waiting room, nursing station, charting room, blood drawing room and microscope room. The department has a 10,000 sq. ft. Bone Marrow Transplant unit.
The BioIron Centre at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI) includes a health science building dedicated to translational and clinical research in iron. The program includes a Ferritometer (SQUID); quantitative MRI of the heart, pancreas, brain, liver; and a research laboratory dedicated to iron metabolism and transport, and iron injury. In collaboration with University of California, San Francisco, Department of Radiology, there is a Radiology research computer support system that maintains specialized software for MRI/MRS research.
A Physiatry and Functional Assessment Centre including a 20-bed inpatient and multidisciplinary outpatient facility focusing in brain injury and neurodegenerative disorders. They have experience in deep brain stimulators, intrathecal baclofen pumps, and NBIA reliability assessments.

Expertise

The Northern California Hemoglobinopathy and BioIron Center at CHRCO has a history of conducting many clinical trials. These include several studies evaluating iron overload, iron chelation trials, and neurodegenerative diseases in red cell disorders. The program actively monitors over 400 patients with iron overload who are treated with iron chelators including DFP. The program has an FDA approved IND for research with DFP in NBIA (IND 104880). It has been treating NBIA patients with DFP for over 2 years in pilot and compassionate studies. Dr. Vichinsky has been working closely in the management of patients and in the development of the FDA IND with the NBIA Center in Oregon Health and Science University, Drs. Penny Hogarth and Susan Hayflick.

Main tasks in the consortium

•    Partner in WP1, WP4, WP6