Accelerator Programs
Accelerator programs at Nationwide Children’s Hospital transform patient care, improve health equity and access to care and benefit the community. This is a designation for our integrated research and clinical care programs that have an established track record inclusive of “bench to bedside” research with plans to continue innovating clinical care and research beyond program duration.
“This recognition and funding support will further advance our most prestigious programs. A key strategic goal for Nationwide Children's is to integrate our clinical care and pioneering research to benefit our patients and children across the globe. The Accelerator Program is one more way we will expand on that important goal,” said Dennis Durbin, MD, MSCE, president, Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's.
The Germain Family generously funded three Accelerator Programs to date: the Gene Therapy Center of Excellence, the Epilepsy Surgery Program and the Comprehensive Sarcoma Program.
Opportunities to fund additional Accelerator Programs are available through our foundation.
Nationwide Children’s faculty interested in applying for funding, visit Anchor.
Currently Funded Accelerator Programs
The Comprehensive Sarcoma Program brings together a team with expertise in the diagnosis and management of bone and soft tissue sarcoma, with an emphasis on novel and innovative treatment approaches. The sarcoma team is working to fill gaps in early-phase clinical trials and streamline interactions among divisions to ensure seamless care. Through the three-year accelerator program, sarcoma team members will increase clinical and trial volumes, implement universal biology consent, launch rapid research autopsy, and boost surgical innovation via 3D printing and gait analysis.
Epilepsy affects 1 in 26 people. Currently available medications are ineffective for about a third of children with epilepsy. In those cases, curative or palliative surgery may be the only option. The Epilepsy Surgery Accelerator Program enhances the care of epilepsy patients, especially those with medically intractable epilepsy, to offer many treatment options and expands research opportunities:
- Develop a streamlined patient pathway from epilepsy diagnosis to surgery.
- Further engage in basic science and translational research for epilepsy, building on the genomic profiling protocol currently in place.
- Expand clinical research efforts to multicenter epilepsy research programs.
Through collaboration with the Institute for Genomic Medicine, the Epilepsy Surgery Accelerator Program is engaged in the pursuit of curing epilepsy for children with unrelenting seizures.
By streamlining processes, increasing efficiency for facilitating clinical trials and introducing FDA approved therapies to our patients, the Gene Therapy Center of Excellence serves to improve access to gene therapies for patients. As a clinical care and research collaboration, the Gene Therapy Center of Excellence has four key aims:
- Streamline process related to prior authorization, drug order, receipt and storage to shorten the time from commercialization to patient delivery.
- Facilitate best practices for investigational gene therapy administration, delivery and training.
- Function as a hub for intravenous gene therapy delivery, leading in biosafety and compliance, and educating patients and families.
- Connect faculty and family foundations to develop and manage partnerships for gene therapy research and clinical trials.