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Pediatric research consortia unveil CAVATICA data platform

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Javad Nazarian, PhD, MSC, joined peers from prestigious children’s hospitals from around the world.

Dr. Nazarian’s lab at Children’s is part of the CBTTC, which has helped in launching CAVATICA. Pictured (from left to right): Dr. Nazarian, Sabine Mueller, M.D., Ph.D. (PNOC Trial Director), Rishi Lulla, M.D. (CBTTC Executive Director), Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., (NIH Director), and Adam Resnick, PHD (CBTTC Scientific Director).

Earlier this week, The White House released the Cancer Moonshot report, which calls upon the public and private sectors to transform cancer research and care. Children’s National’s Javad Nazarian, Ph.D., M.S.C.,  joined peers from prestigious children’s hospitals from around the world at the news conference. Dr. Nazarian is a key player in the initiative, as his lab is part of the Children’s Brain Tumor Tissue Consortium (CBTTC) and is answering the call to action. The CBTTC and the Pacific Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium, in partnership with Seven Bridges, announced the launch of CAVATICA, a data analysis platform that will help researchers to collaboratively access and share data about pediatric cancers, congenital disorders and rare diseases such as epilepsy and autism. More data will be connected than ever before—CAVATICA will interoperate with the Genomic Data Commons and other NIH data repositories. “It’s an exciting time for research,” says Dr. Nazarian.

Unlocking the ‘black box’ of NICU monitors to protect vulnerable preemies

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MiningdatafromNICUmonitors

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What’s Known
Around the world, some 15 million infants are born prematurely each year. Babies born prematurely can spend their first weeks to months of life in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) tethered to machines that closely monitor vital signs, such as breathing and heart rate.

After discharge, preemies have a very high risk of returning to the NICU, often due to breathing difficulties, such as experiencing excessively long pauses between breaths. Such acute life-threatening events are a major cause of preemies’ hospital readmission and may result in death.

What’s New
During infants’ NICU stays, cardiorespiratory monitors amass a mountain of data about each child. Through the unprecedented collaboration of researchers working in various divisions of Children’s National Health System, the team was able to unlock that black box of information by creating algorithms to extract data and by using retrospective analyses to tease out new insights. This multidisciplinary team has been able to predict with a greater degree of precision which babies are at higher risk of returning to the NICU after discharge. What these most vulnerable preemies have in common is the degree of maturation of their autonomic nervous system, which controls such involuntary actions as heart rate and breathing. The sympathetic nervous system, which the body leverages as it copes with the stress of life-threatening events (ALTE), also plays a role in these infants’ heightened vulnerability. Being able to identify these newborns earlier has the potential to lower readmissions and save lives.

Questions for Future Research
Q: How can further computer-based analyses of NICU monitor data be used to determine how preemies respond to routine activities, such as feeding to predict which infants have compromised cardiorespiratory systems?
Q: How can we develop a test to assess all premature infants for physiologic readiness for safe NICU discharge and, thus, prevent ALTE and sudden death in this vulnerable population?

Source: “Vagal Hypersensitivity in Premature Infants and Risk of Hospital Readmission Due to Acute Life-Threatening Events (ALTE).” G. Nino, R. Govindan, T. AlShargabi, M. Metzler, R. Joshi, G. Perez, A.N. Massaro, R. McCarter, and A. du Plessis. Presented during the 2016 Pediatric Academic Societies Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD. May 2, 2016.