The Innovate, Design, Engineer, and Accelerate (IDEA) Lab will be a centerpiece of the Morgan Center for Research and Innovation at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute. Researchers will have the on-campus ability to shape their creativity with resources for biofabrication. In this episode of the Bench to Bedside podcast, host Susan Furth, MD, PhD, invited the leader of the IDEA Lab, Elizabeth Silvestro, PhD, to learn more about the manufacturing lab’s capabilities and how it's pushing research to new engineering heights.

The Morgan Center for Research and Innovation expands Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's state-of-the-art research environment. Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Susan Furth invited Audrey Odom John, MD, PhD, to discuss her involvement with planning her new lab space, and how new technologies and opportunities for collaboration will bolster her research within the Immunology and Infectious Diseases Research Initiative.

With a fall 2025 ribbon-cutting ceremony planned for the 17-story, 350,000 square-foot Morgan Center for Research & Innovation, Dr. Sue Furth invited Donald Moore, senior vice president of CHOP’s Real Estate, Facilities, and Operations, to discuss how the project came to fruition, what researchers and the Philadelphia community can look forward to experiencing, and how Moore helped facilitate the project to its completion.

In the second installment of our Power of Philanthropy series, host Susan Furth, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at CHOP, chats with Laura Adang, MD, PhD, an attending physician in the Division of Neurology. Dr. Adang's research is grounded in years of learning, relationship-building, and collaboration with patients, families, and family-founded organizations who raise funds and awareness for research into leukodystrophies, a group of rare neurological disorders.

In the first part of our Bench to Bedside series focused on the transformative power of donations, gifts, and investments to support pediatric research, Monica Taylor Lotty, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia’s Chief Development Officer, shares the deeply heartfelt reasons behind philanthropy, which, at its core, “literally means love of humanity”.   Learn more about how you can support children's health by contacting the CHOP Foundation: https://www.chop.edu/giving

Today’s high throughput sequencing techniques empower researchers to sequence a genome, epigenome, and transcriptome faster than ever before. At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute, Teodora Orendovici, PhD, Technical Director of the High Throughput Sequencing Core (HTS), is a passionate expert and leader devoted to ensuring all investigators, regardless of their research interests and goals, have access to the most advanced sequencing technologies. Accessibility and equity is critical, says Dr. Orendovici, if we are to develop a world where personalized medicine becomes possible for all patients. 

In the second part of our Explore the Cores series, Florin Tuluc, MD, PhD, Director of the Flow Cytometry Core Laboratory at CHOP Research Institute, sits down with host Susan Furth, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, to talk about what makes the Flow Lab a unique and valuable resource for the CHOP scientific community. Spoiler: It’s one-part state-of-the-art technology and two parts a team of incredible individuals with a passion for pediatric health.

Have you ever wondered how, and where, biospecimen samples go after a patient gives consent for its use in research? The latest guest of our Bench to Bedside podcast, David Stokes, PhD, is the Technical Director of the Biorepository Resource Center at CHOP, a core facility that serves all of CHOP’s biobanking needs. With the unique capacity to store 3 million samples and the highly advanced infrastructure to keep the specimens organized, preserved, and accessible to the research community, the BioRC also houses immense hope for breakthroughs in children’s health. Listen in as Dr. Stokes shares how the BioRC has evolved over a decade to become one of CHOP’s most unique and valuable research resources.

Precision medicine, also known as personalized medicine, has revolutionized how physicians and scientists treat and study disease. According to Theodore Laetsch, MD, an oncologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, this ability to track and tailor individual patients’ unique genetic signatures has the most transformative potential in pediatric cancer. In this episode of Bench to Bedside, Dr. Laetsch shares how his new Frontier Program, the Center for Precision Medicine for High-risk Pediatric Cancer, harnesses advanced technologies and a growing multi omics database to optimize outcomes for childhood cancer patients.

From pathology to prognosis, heart failure in children appears vastly different than it does in adults. How we study, approach, and ultimately treat the disease should too, according to Joseph Rossano, MD, chief of the Division of Cardiology at CHOP. As director of the Advanced Cardiac Therapies for Heart Failure Patients Frontier Program, Dr. Rossano aims to bring cutting-edge scientific discoveries from the bench to the bedside with this in mind. 

With a stroll down the hallway at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, you run into a tremendous knowledge base and expertise to help answer challenging scientific questions in pediatrics. Lindsey George, MD, PhD, director of the Novel Therapeutics for Bleeding Disorders Frontier Program, shares how this combined clinical experience in gene therapy for hemophilia and in other related bleeding disorders leads toward innovative approaches.

Since establishing the first surgical intensive care unit (ICU) for newborns and infants in 1962, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has been at the forefront of transforming care for its tiniest patients. The Delivery Room of the Future Frontier Program, directed by neonatologist Elizabeth Foglia, MD, aims to provide every infant a chance at the healthiest outcomes and quality of life. 

“Be bold. Solve important problems,” shares Bench to Bedside guest, Flaura Winston, MD, PhD, founder and co-scientific director of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention. Hear how this Center of Emphasis takes a research action to impact approach when it comes to preventing injury in children. 

Dr. Beverly Davidson and her multidisciplinary team at the Raymond G. Perelman Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics are working on “aha moments,” both big and small, to improve gene and cell therapies in search of cures for debilitating disorders.

Join the conversation with Hakon Hakonarson, MD, PhD, founding director of the Center for Applied Genomics, where scientists develop new and better ways to diagnose and treat children affected by rare and complex medical disorders.

Dr. Diana Montoya-Williams wants her advocacy-informed research to matter to the communities she is trying to help. She's an attending neonatologist and faculty member of PolicyLab at CHOP whose research covers health disparities, social determinants of health, perinatal health policy, and immigration policies.  

Paulette McRae, PhD, Associate Director of Specialty Programs and Diversity in the Office of Academic Training and Outreach Programs, has devoted her career to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives that open doors for the next generation, so that they can see how they can make a difference in research.

The Center for Health Equity at CHOP aims to address social disease and provide unbiased clinical care so that children in Philadelphia and beyond can achieve their best health. The Center's Director Tyra Bryant-Stephens, nationally recognized for her work in community-driven, evidence-based research in asthma interventions, shares why "health equity is a state of mind.

Seeing discoveries happen is "one of the most invigorating and exciting parts of my job," shares Bench to Bedside guest, Madeline Bell, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia President and Chief Executive Officer. Hear how research touches every part of CHOP, and the ways we're continuing our legacy of 100 years of trailblazing research.

Much like the scientist who led the first research lab at CHOP in 1922, our Bench to Bedside guest, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center, has spent most of his career studying infectious diseases with a focus on vaccine development. He gives us a look back at how vaccine development has evolved and shares "the most fun time of his life" as a scientist.