News

February 25, 2021 – The Pediatric Dermatology Research Alliance (PeDRA) is proud to announce the latest benefit being made available to PeDRA Members – the PeDRA Research App. The App builds on overwhelmingly positive feedback for the 2020 PeDRA Annual Conference app to provide a perpetual home for virtual education, research studies, resources, and more. Among other things, Active, Trainee, and Affiliate PeDRA Members can use the app to access the new series of PeDRA Podcasts, join discussions and live meetings of Focused Study Groups, and view an up-to-late list of PeDRA publications.

Perhaps most importantly, members can use the app to stay connected to each another even though they may be geographically dispersed and facing ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of the app is to carry the energy and productivity of a PeDRA Annual Conference throughout the year to bring us ever closer to PeDRA’s vision of changing lives and healing children with skin disease through collaboration and discovery.

To access the app, members should follow this link from their Apple or Android device and use the email linked to their member profile to log in. A web version of the app is also available and can be accessed through the same link.

If you aren’t a PeDRA member and want to check out the PeDRA Research App, please consider joining PeDRA today!         

November 10, 2020 – Under the direction of Andrea Zaenglein, MD of Penn State Health and Moise Levy, MD of Dell Medical School, the Pediatric Dermatology Research Alliance Use of Retinoids in Ichthyosis Work Group has published a consensus manuscript on the use of topical and systemic retinoids for the care of children and adolescents with ichthyosis and other disorders of cornification.  Available as an open access paper on-line in the journal Pediatric Dermatology, the manuscript presents consensus-based recommendations assembled using a modified Delphi process that brought together existing evidence and expert opinion from a group of 24 experts from pediatric dermatology, general dermatology, pediatric cariology, obstetrics-gynecology, bone development, and ophthalmology. Ultimately, the hope is for these recommendations to benefit families living with this rare group of genetic skin diseases through better-informed treatment decisions and improved management of disease.

The manuscript addresses many clinical scenarios and patient-centric considerations, including skin comfort, long-term safety, and shared decision-making.  The Work Group provides a total of 28 consensus statements regarding effects on the skin, topical use, dosing, effects on bone, effects on the eye, effects on lipids and liver, psychiatric effects, contraception, impact of iPLEDGE.  In conclusion, the manuscript touts the effectiveness of systemic retinoids in children and adolescents, while clearly defining a list of 21 practice gaps that remain for future study.    

Explore the PeDRA Publication Page for more on this manuscript, as well as each of PeDRA’s other peer-reviewed publications.    

July 28, 2020 – PeDRA and the National Eczema Association (NEA) have announced that their inaugural Childhood Eczema Challenge Grant will be awarded to Junko Takeshita, MD, PhD, MSCE of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. The grant of $50,000 will commence in August 2020.

Nearly 10 million U.S children under the age of 18 are affected by eczema, with one-third affected by moderate-to-severe disease. Despite recent therapeutic advances, the burdens on these patients and their families can be significant, and many important research questions remain unanswered.

NEA and PeDRA together created the Childhood Eczema Challenge Grant to accelerate research that improves the health and quality of life of pediatric eczema patients and their families.

Takeshita will be awarded for her grant proposal titled “Understanding Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Health Care Utilization for Childhood Atopic Dermatitis.” Atopic dermatitis (AD) disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic children and is associated with significant financial burden in the U.S. In previous research, Takeshita and her team found that Black children are less likely than white children to seek any outpatient care for their AD, and among children who do access care, Black and Hispanic children are more likely to go to the emergency room for their AD than white children. For this grant, Takeshita aims to identify and understand the barriers to outpatient health care use and reasons for specific health care utilization patterns, especially emergency room use, for AD among white, Black and Hispanic children from the caregiver perspective. The qualitative study will include interviews with caregivers of white, Black, and Hispanic children with AD across a spectrum of health care use patterns.

The findings will directly inform the development and implementation of future interventions to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in health care use for childhood AD, optimize care utilization, and improve outcomes.

In addition to providing meaningful research funding to those awarded, the Challenge Grant furthers the missions and strategic priorities of both NEA and PeDRA.  For more information on the 2020 Childhood Eczema Challenge Grant, visit https://pedraresearch.org/grants-awards or https://nationaleczema.org/research/research-we-fund/for-researchers/. 

About National Eczema Association (NEA)

Founded in 1988, NEA is the largest, 501(c)(3) non-profit, US patient advocacy organization serving people affected by eczema.  NEA’s mission is to improve the health and quality of life for individuals with eczema through research, support, and education.  For more on NEA visit https://nationalecezma.org

June 9, 2020

Collaboration and cooperation are core tenets of PeDRA.  The extraordinary events of the past few weeks have highlighted the need to address racism, race-based disparities, and injustices against black lives in our society.  Diversity and inclusiveness strengthen our PeDRA research network and are critical to the pursuit of our mission and vision to improve the health of children with skin disease.  PeDRA acknowledges that racial inequality is pervasive.  As the research arm of the Society for Pediatric Dermatology, we are in full support of their Statement on Racial Justice.  We pledge to actively evaluate our programs, committees, leadership, and research studies and then take action to implement strategies and changes to overcome the existing disparities identified.  We stand together, undivided, to help all patients overcome the burdens of skin disease through collaboration and discovery. 

May 13, 2020 – Five trainees have been awarded PeDRA Research Fellowships to conduct one year of mentored research under the guidance of a senior investigator.  Research Fellowships are a new offering from PeDRA in support of its mission to create, inspire, and sustain research to prevent, treat, and cure childhood skin disease.  These fellowships represent a direct investment of $100,000 in support of the next generation of physician scientists and the advancement of active research projects in the field of pediatric dermatology.   

Click through the links below to learn more about each of this year’s Research Fellowships:

• Laila Abbas will conduct a project titled “Investigating Constitutive and Cell-Driven Fibroblast Activation in Pediatric Morphea” under the mentorship of Heidi Jacobe, MD at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
• Carmel Aghdasi will conduct a project titled “Discovering the Immune Phenotype of Morphologic Subsets of Atopic Dermatitis at the Single Cell Level” under the mentorship of Kelly Cordoro, MD at UCSF.
• Stephanie Lee, MD will conduct a project titled “Utilization of the Topical Steroid Volume Calculator and its Effect on Atopic Dermatitis Clinical Outcomes” under the mentorship of Larry Eichenfield, MD at UCSD.
• Danny Linggonegoro will conduct a project titled “The Impact of Dilute Bleach Compresses on the Incidence and Severity of Radiation Dermatitis” under the mentorship of Jen Huang, MD at Harvard Medical School.
• Muskaan Sachdeva will conduct a project titled “Keratinocyte Carcinoma in Pediatric Solid Organ Transplant Patients” under the mentorship of Cathryn Sibbald, MD, MScPhm at the University of Toronto.

To learn more about Research Fellowships and other funding opportunities, visit PeDRA’s Grants & Awards Page or send us an email.  If you aren’t already a PeDRA member, join us to be eligible to mentor a research fellow in 2021. Interested in supporting projects focused on childhood skin diseases through the PeDRA Research Fellowships Program? Click here to donate now or email us to discuss named fellowship opportunities.

Special thanks to AbbVie, Pfizer, and Regeneron/Sanofi-Genzyme for their support of 2020 PeDRA Research Fellowships.     

   

April 22, 2020 – Under the direction of Kelly Cordoro, MD of the University of California, San Francisco the Pediatric Dermatology COVID-19 Response Task Force (PDCRTF) has published a guidance manuscript on the use of systemic immunosuppressive therapies for inflammatory skin diseases in children.  Available on-line in the journal Pediatric Dermatology, the manuscript presents consensus-based recommendations assembled using a survey that completed by 37 experts in the field.    

With this manuscript, the PDCRTF addresses a variety of clinical scenarios, including treatment of patients with no symptoms, upper-respiratory infections without a COVID-19 diagnosis, confirmed COVID-19 exposure, and confirmed COVID-19 diagnoses. It is hoped that the paper can help inform health care providers and families making decisions to initiate or continue use of systemic oral and biologic medications for the treatment of inflammatory skin diseases in children including psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and alopecia areata.  It also addresses issues facing front-line health care providers like lab monitoring and methods of communicating with patients and families. 

Visit the COVID-19 Information Page for other resources to support pediatric dermatologists, patients, and families during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Explore the PeDRA Publication Page for more on each of PeDRA’s peer-reviewed publications.    

April 15, 2020 – Six investigators have received funding through PeDRA’s 2019 PeDRA Research Grant and 2019 Weston Career Development Award (CDA) programs.  Research Grants are given to support early-stage research projects in an effort to lay the foundation for larger scale studies in future. The Weston CDA is given to develop the career of a promising clinician scientist through one year of mentored research.

Together, these six awards represent a contribution of $112,816 and bring PeDRA’s total 2019 investment in projects, initiatives, and investigators to more than $149,000.  This is the highest one-year total in PeDRA’s eight-year history. 

Click through the links below to learn more about each of these grants and awards:

Research Grants

• Joel Fish, MD from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto was awarded $15,000 to pursue a study titled “An International Study to Develop A Patient-Reported Outcome Measure for Scars (The SCAR-Q), and to Determine the Psychosocial Impact of Scarring”
• Jen Huang, MD from Boston Children’s Hospital was awarded $14,824 to pursue a study titled “Preventative Skin Care for Children Undergoing Targeted CNS Tumor Therapy”
• Elena Hawryluk, MD, PhD from Massachusetts General Hospital was awarded $13,000 to pursue a study titled “What does a pediatric BAP1 inactivated melanocytic tumor (BIMT) look like?”
• Steve Feldman, MD, PhD from Wake Forest was awarded $15,000 to pursue a study titled “Studying Topical Adherence in Atopic Dermatitis: What We Can Learn from Positive Outliers”
• Annie Grossberg, MD from Johns Hopkins was awarded $14,992 to pursue a study titled “Examining How Virtual Reality Improves Children’s Coping During Dermatologic Procedures”

Weston Career Development Award

Supported in partnership with the Society for Pediatric Dermatology

• Lucinda Kohn, MD, MHS from the University of Colorado Denver was awarded $40,000 to conduct one-year mentored project titled “Expanding Access to Severe Acne Care for Navajo Adolescents Through Education”

The deadline for applications to this year’s Research Grants and Weston Career Development Award has been set at December 3, 2020.  To learn more about these and other research funding opportunities, visit PeDRA’s Grants & Awards Page or send us an email.     

Interested in supporting projects focused on childhood skin diseases through the PeDRA Research Grants Program? Click here to donate now or email us to discuss named grant opportunities.

March 24, 2020 – The pediatric dermatology community is proud to recognize three PeDRA members as recipients of 2020 Research Awards from the Dermatology Foundation.  Lisa Arkin, MD of the University of Wisconsin received a Pediatric Dermatology Career Development Award for a project titled Towards a Precision-based Treatment for Facial Vascular Stains, Leo Shmuylovich, MD, PhD of Washington University received a Dermatologist Investigator Research Fellowship to study Laser Stimulated Thermal Imaging of Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer, andJoy Wan, MD, MSCE of the University of Pennsylvania received a Career Development Award for a project titled Neurocognitive Functioning of Children with Atopic Dermatitis. 

Together with Elena Hawryluk, MD, PhD (Pediatric Dermatology Career Development Award, year 3) and Jeff Yu, MD (Pediatric Dermatology Career Development Award, year 2), this brings the total of active Dermatology Foundation-funded PeDRA members to five, and impacts projects spanning three of PeDRA’s five working groups. 

Visit the Dermatology Foundation website for information on all Research Awards granted in 2020 and to learn more about future funding opportunities.  To learn about research funding opportunities from PeDRA, visit the Grants & Awards Page.