We have added two new ways to communicate progress made by Children’s Discovery Institute investigators with our donors and partners. Our first annual Investors Meeting will give our donors a first look at discoveries by Institute investigators. We have also introduced a newsletter, PATHWAYS, to highlight achievements within our four Centers.

The lead article in this first issue of the newsletter discusses new sequencing technology developed by Drs. Todd Druley and Robi Mitra that will help identify rare, but important genetic variants related to disease. These investigators have exceeded expectations and have created a novel and useful new tool that can help speed discovery of the genetic causes of a variety of childhood diseases. Drs. Druley and Mitra are members of the McDonnell Pediatric Cancer Center.

Our first 18 months have proven to be exciting. We established the Children’s Discovery Institute to attract faculty from across Washington University and engage them in research focused on important issues of childhood diseases. The initial two rounds of funding have supported investigators in the Departments of Chemistry, Biology, Biomedical Engineering, and Computational Biology. Please read the summaries of their Children’s Discovery Institute research on this website.

The vast majority of our awards have gone to teams of investigators, generally from multiple disciplines. Often, one or more of the team members are junior, emerging research scientists. While the awards themselves are modest, I believe that they are leveraging intellectual capital toward important issues in childhood diseases.