Texas Children's Hospital awarded grants for research

The Simmons Family Foundation has awarded $290,000 to researchers at Texas Children's Hospital for joint collaboration projects in heart, cancer and neurological research.

The announcement came at the 2012 Collaborative Research Awards Luncheon on Feb. 17, during which a total of $635,000 was awarded to support the Collaborative Research Fund program.

The TCH researchers will pursue further funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and other organizations.

The team study, "A stent mounted pulmonary valve targeted to pediatric congenital heart disease," is led by Dr. Henri Justino from Texas Children's Heart Center with Dr. Jane Grande-Allen and Dr. Daniel Harrington, both from Rice. The group is working to develop an artificial valve to repair infant and juveline hearts.

"Potent organometallic inhibitors of Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 3 (STAT3)" is led by Dr. Michele Redell, a pediatric oncologist with the TCH Cancer Center, and Dr. Zachary Ball with Rice University. They are working to develop new drugs for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia.

The "Development of a polyvalent therapeutic strategy for neurodegenerative lysosomal storage disorders" team is led by Dr. Marco Sardiello from the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at TCH and Dr. Laura Segatori from Rice University. They are working to find treatment for a range of currently incurable lysosomal storage disorders, which could change the treatment of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.