First-in-Humans Clinical Trial to Treat Children with Relapsed Neuroblastoma Opens at American Family Children’s Hospital
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Above, Kenneth DeSantes, MD in a research lab. DeSantes and Paul Sondel, MD, PhD are co-Principal Investigators on a pioneering first-in-humans clinical trial for children with relapsed or refractory neuroblastoma.
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A first-in-humans clinical trial for children with relapsed or refractory neuroblastoma has opened at American Family Children's Hospital (AFCH). Neuroblastoma is one of the most common solid tumors in children. Patients who are classified as "high-risk" (about 40 percent) have less than a 50 percent survival rate.
131I-MIBG, a type of molecular targeted radiotherapy, has been used for many years to treat children with relapsed neuroblastoma. AFCH is one of about 25 centers in the United States capable of providing this therapy. While the treatment is effective, it is not curative, so significant effort has been expended devising ways to improve the durability of responses achieved with this agent.
This trial, which initially opened in England, is investigating the combination of targeted radiation therapy with immunotherapy to treat children with relapsed or refractory neuroblastoma. The concept is based on laboratory work conducted at University of Wisconsin–Madison by Paul Sondel, MD, PhD (Professor and Research Director, Division of Hematology, Oncology & Bone Marrow Transplant) and Zachary Morris, MD, PhD (Department of Human Oncology). Sondel and Kenneth DeSantes, MD (Professor, Division of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology & Bone Marrow Transplant) are the trial’s co-Principal Investigators.
In a pre-clinical murine model, significant synergy was demonstrated between radiation therapy and immunotherapy. This trial, known as the “MiniVan” study, combines 131I-MIBG therapy with a monoclonal antibody that recognizes neuroblastoma and focuses the patients’ immune system on the cancer. A third drug, nivolumab, is utilized in order to prevent the tumor from shielding itself against the immunologic attack, thereby enhancing immune-mediated tumor destruction and improving the possibility of cure.
The UW Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant program is collaborating with three other centers in Europe on this pioneering first-in-humans clinical trial. AFCH is the first and only center in the United States to offer this therapy.
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Jasmine Zapata, MD, MPH, Named to Governor's Health Equity Council
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Above, Jasmine Zapata, MD, MPH, stands in a clinic hallway. Zapata was recently named to the Governor's Health Equity Council. Last month, Zapata received the Wisconsin Medical Society Foundation's annual "Superhero of Medicine" Award, and earlier this year she was honored with UW-Madison's Outstanding Women of Color Award.
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Jasmine Zapata, MD, MPH (Assistant Professor, Division of Neonatology & Newborn Nursery) has been appointed to the Governor’s Health Equity Council, which has been charged with creating a comprehensive plan to reduce and eliminate health disparities throughout the state of Wisconsin by 2030. The announcement was made by Governor Tony Evers on September 30, 2020. It follows an executive order from earlier this year to create the council and a 2016 report published by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, which gave the state of Wisconsin an overall health disparities grade of “D.”
As a member of the council, Zapata plans to be vocal and advocate for health inequities in pediatric care and access. Her primary focus will be addressing the racial inequities in maternal child health. “College-educated Black women have two to three times higher rates of infant mortality and premature birth than white women who are high school dropouts,” stated Zapata in the council's first meeting on September 30. This statistic is something she passionately wants to change, both as a public health doctor and as a Black mother. In fact, it was her own journey as a mother that led her to study and compare the different maternal health outcomes of Black and white women in Wisconsin. “I feel excited that my personal and professional experiences are able to align,” stated Zapata. “My training at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health, especially my board certification in Preventive Medicine and Public Health, have prepared me for a moment such as this.”
Thirty-three people will serve on the Health Equity Council. In addition to Zapata, three other individuals with appointments at University of Wisconsin will serve on the committee: Gina Green-Harris, MBA (Director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute Regional Milwaukee Office, Director of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health Center for Community Engagement and Health Partnerships, and Director of the All of Us Research program in Milwaukee), Paula Tran Inzeo, MPH (Director of the Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health program in the Population Health Institute), and Shiva Bidar-Sielaff, MA (UW Health Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). Green-Harris will serve as chair of the council.
“Given all that is going on in our county, state, and nation, I knew that now more than ever, it was time for me to continue the fight for health equity and advocate for patients and families both inside the clinic walls and within the community,” stated Zapata as she reflected on the announcement of her appointment. “Overall, I feel really excited and hopeful for the future!”
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Peter Ferrazzano, MD, Initial Recipient of the Enid and Jerry Weygandt Professorship in Pediatric Critical Care
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Above, Peter Ferrazzano, MD, at work in his research lab at the Waisman Center. Ferrazzano is the initial recipient of the Enid and Jerry Weygandt Professorship in Pediatric Critical Care.
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Congratulations to Peter Ferrazzano, MD (Professor and Division Chief, Division of Critial Care), who is the initial recipient of the Enid and Jerry Weygandt Professorship in Pediatric Critical Care. Enid and Jerry Weygandt (Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin School of Business) have been loyal contributors to the Department of Pediatrics since 2012 when they made their first gift as part of the Sick Kids Can’t Wait campaign. Jerry and Enid have continued giving an annual donation, including a gift in January of 2019, joining The 1920 Society, an initiative to strengthen the endowment at the American Family Children’s Hospital.
The Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, led by Dr. Ferrazzano, provides outstanding state-of-the-art care in a collaborative and coordinated manner to all critically ill children admitted to American Family Children’s Hospital. The Division also provides high quality patient care to children and families undergoing sedation for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures and medical imaging. Division members are engaged in a variety of scholarly activities that include medical education, transport medicine, quality improvement, medical ethics, and global health, in addition to a wide range of innovative clinical and basic science research projects. The Weygandt Professorship will be front and center in helping to advance the Division’s priorities and initiatives, aimed at continually improving the care provided to critically ill children.
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New Grants
Ann Allen, MD, and Team Awarded UW Prevention Research Center Grant
  
Congratulations to Principal Investigator Ann Allen, MD (Assistant Professor, Division of Hospital Medicine) along with Co-Investigators Elizabeth Goetz, MD, MPH (Associate Professor, Division of Neonatology & Newborn Nursery), and Nina Menda, MD (Assistant Professor, Division of Neonatology & Newborn Nursery), who recently received a 2020 Small Grant Award of $18,359 from the UW Prevention Research Center for the project, “Pilot Testing an Evidence-based, Family Centered Intervention for Opioid Exposed Newborns in Wisconsin’s Rural and Community Hospitals.” The goal of this 1-year project is to develop and pilot an Eat, Sleep, Console (ESC) implementation intervention across Wisconsin hospitals by creating educational resources, and collaborating with the Wisconsin Association for Perinatal Care (WAPC) and Wisconsin Perinatal Quality Collaborative (WisPQC). ESC is an evidence-based treatment for newborns exposed to opioids, which affects nearly 1 in 100 Wisconsin newborns. By conducting this study, the team hopes to reduce unnecessary hospital days, healthcare costs and parent-child bonding disruption in WI infants exposed to opioids, and simultaneously generate the tools and preliminary data to support widespread implementation of ESC in states and health systems.
Michelle Kelly, MD, MPH awarded Career Development Award from AHRQ
 Congratulations to Michelle Kelly, MD, MPH (Associate Professor, Division of Hospital Medicine), who was recently awarded a five-year K08 Career Development Award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), for her project, “BedsideNotes: Engaging families to improve pediatrics safety.” This project, in the amount of $783,075, provides salary support for Dr. Kelly and protected research time, during which she will design an intervention, BedsideNotes, to share doctors’ inpatient notes with families at the bedside to engage them in the care of their hospitalized child and partner with them to prevent harm. Dr. Kelly will be supported by Primary Mentor Pascale Carayon, PhD, and Co-Mentors Barbara Bowers, PhD, RN, FAAN, and Tosha Wetterneck, MD, MS, FACP.
Peter Ferrazzano, MD, and Team Awarded $1 Million Grant to Create Center for Pediatric Acquired Brain Injury Research
  Congratulations to Peter Ferrazzano, MD (Professor and Division Chief, Division of Critical Care), Alison Brooks, MD, MPH (UW Department of Orthopedics & Rehabilitation and Pediatrics Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship), Traci Snedden, PhD (UW School of Nursing), and Christian Franck, PhD (UW Department of Mechanical Engineering) on their $1 million award from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education and the UW Athletic Department in support of their proposal to create a Center for Pediatric Acquired Brain Injury Research. The first step in this project is an innovative study addressing a major gap in the field of pediatric brain injury research: the effect of repetitive sub-concussive head impacts in children. The multi-disciplinary team will use a novel combination of cutting-edge brain imaging, newly developed high-fidelity wearable motion sensing devices, a newly developed academic issues instrument, and SMS text-based data collection to study the relationship between the accumulated burden of repetitive head impacts, brain function, academic performance and socio-emotional functioning. The investigators will focus initially on youth soccer players, and then broaden to other sports and non-sport injury mechanisms in future studies. The project represents a new paradigm for detection, diagnosis, and understanding of injury in the developing brain. Additional details on this center and pilot program will be published in an upcoming issue of Milestones.
Stephen Meyn, MD, PhD, Receives UW2020 Funding
 Congratulations to PI, Stephen Meyn, MD, PhD (Professor, Division of Genetics and Metabolism) and Co-Investigator Christopher Bradfield, PhD (UW Oncology), on funding of their project, “A critical tool for human genomics and precision medicine: De novo human genome assembly.” This one-year project pairs the Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine and the UW Biotechnology Center in making affordable and reliable ultra-long read-based de novo human genome assembly widely available to University of Wisconsin researchers and clinicians so that they can reach these missing regions of the human genome and untangle complex genomic rearrangements in normal tissues and tumors. This resource will put the UW–Madison at the cutting edge of genome science, drive disease gene discovery, and gain novel insights into cancer biology, as well as identify new therapeutic targets for cancer therapy. This project is one of 12 to be funded in the 6th round of the UW2020: WARF Discovery Initiative, and has been awarded funding of $157,381 from UW’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education (OVCRGE) and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). Additional information is available on the OVCRGE's website.
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Christian Capitini, MD Appointed Program Director for UWCCC DT Program
 Christian Capitini, MD (Associate Professor, Division of Hematology, Oncology & Bone Marrow Transplant) has been appointed as program director for the UW Carbone Cancer Center (UWCCC) Developmental Therapeutics (DT) program. The overarching goal of the DT Program is to identify more effective therapies and strategies for the treatment of patients with advanced cancer. The DT Program houses much of the UWCCC’s drug and biomarker discovery and development work, as well as preclinical and clinical translational efforts.
Jesse Boyette Anderson, MD, Wins 2nd Place at MWPCS Annual Meeting
 Congratulations to Jesse Boyette Anderson, MD (PL3 Resident), who won second place in the resident category at the Midwest Pediatric Cardiology Society (MWPCS) annual meeting for her oral presentation “Management of Isolated Bicuspid Aortic Valve: Current Practice Survey”. The annual meeting took place virtually on September 18, 2020.
Kristin Shadman, MD, Selected for AAP VIP Expert Workgroup
 Kristin Shadman, MD (Associate Professor, Division of Hospital Medicine) was selected by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Value in Inpatient Pediatrics (VIP) Network to serve as an Expert Workgroup Member in its quality improvement collaborative to improve the use of high flow nasal cannula (HFNC) in hospitalized children. Within this role, Shadman will provide content expertise, contribute to the measurement strategy, and assist in developing an overall project model for the VIP Network Quality Improvement Project.
29 Pediatrics Faculty Awarded 'Top Teacher' for 2019-2020
Due to an error when calculating the total number of evaluations, some of our excellent clinical teachers were inadvertently omitted from last month's announcement about our 2019-2020 Top Teacher awards. In addition to the 25 faculty recognized in the September faculty meeting and issue of Milestones, Tim Chybowski, MD (Clinical Professor, Division of General Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine), Mala Mathur, MD, MPH (Clinical Associate Professor, Division of General Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine), Ande Jones, MD (Clinical Assistant Professor, Division of General Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine), and Nicole "Nikki" St Clair, MD (Associate Professor, Divisions of Global Pediatrics and Hospital Medicine) were also selected for the Top Teacher award by medical students and residents. The full list of award recipients can be found here.
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"Thank you for working so hard with our team this week to meet a major deadline - seeing emails sent overnight pains me, and definitely deserves recognition. Your commitment and dedication is amazing. We are so lucky to have you!'"
