Teagan O’Brien is a bright, spunky 4-year-old who loves reading, dancing, and playing outdoors. Her parents, Kim and Donnie, are firefighters who throw themselves into any new situation. Since they adopted Teagan three-and-a-half years ago, they’ve thrown themselves into supporting her with help from her team at Boston Children’s Hospital. Teagan was already a patient of Boston Children’s Cleft Lip and Craniofacial Center in March 2020 when Kim and Donnie first brought her home. Four months earlier, she’d been born with a cleft palate, an opening in the roof of the mouth. It would take some ti ..read more

When the heart is injured, as in a myocardial infarction, the damaged heart muscle cannot regenerate — instead, scar tissue forms. Cardiomyocytes, the heart muscle cells that generate contractile force, are lost for good. Yet, in mouse models, the hearts of newborns regenerate readily after injury. How are newborn hearts able to recover? What are the necessary ingredients for regeneration? Miao Cui, PhD, began asking these questions as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Eric Olson at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Continuing the investigations in her own lab in the Depar ..read more

Shannon’s journey through a challenging pregnancy with TTTS (twin-twin transfusion syndrome) was, as she puts it, an emotional rollercoaster. In addition to the usual first-time parent jitters and the unexpected news of twins, Shannon and Mike navigated the emotional ups and downs of the rare pregnancy complication. TTTS put their twins at severe risk of health complications, but Shannon credits Boston Children’s Maternal Fetal Care Center (MFCC), in affiliation with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, for helping them through it. “They gave me hope when I had none,” she says. A complex Mo-Di twin p ..read more

Maybe your child has an orthopedic injury and needs surgery, or maybe they need to be treated with a different method. Either way, asking questions can help you understand their doctor’s recommendations and how to prepare for whatever comes next. “Families often find themselves unprepared for their child’s mobility limitations as they heal from surgery or injury,” says orthopedic surgeon Dr. Kristin Livingston of Boston Children’s Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Department. Yet knowing such details in advance can give you a chance to look into resources that could help your child return to acti ..read more

When we’re vaccinated or exposed to an infection, our B cells spring into action, churning out antibodies that are increasingly potent, specific, and protective. This happens through an iterative process known as affinity maturation. Two labs at Boston Children’s Hospital have come up with different ways to enhance affinity maturation and help B cells make more broadly protective antibodies — opening a new door to better vaccines and antibody-based biologics. On the flip side, a third lab shows how B cells and affinity maturation sometimes go awry, creating antibodies that attack the body’s ow ..read more

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), causing devastating abdominal pain, persistent diarrhea, and rectal bleeding, is hard to control with current treatments. Children often experience malnutrition and impaired growth. To get a better handle on IBD, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital decided to eavesdrop on happenings in the colon. In the first effort of its kind, they mapped intestinal cells in mice — genetically, molecularly, and spatially — before, during, and after an episode of colitis. Jeffrey Moffitt, PhD, of Boston Children’s Program in Cellular and ..read more

Bromodomain-containing protein 7 (BRD7) was initially identified as a tumor suppressor, but further research has shown it has a broader role in other cellular processes, including the remodeling of chromosomes and cell cycle progression. Now, Boston Children’s Division of Endocrinology researchers have discovered another purpose for BRD7: It seems to be involved in an alternative insulin signaling pathway, the existence of which had been speculated about for decades. Their finding could lead to new insights on previously unknown aspects of insulin signaling in obesity. “The ultimate ..read more

Boston Children’s Department of Cardiology has more than 100 pediatric and adult cardiologists, over 40 clinical fellows learning the routines of heart care in a major hospital, 12 echocardiogram rooms dedicated to testing the function of a child’s heart, and five labs equipped to perform advanced catheterization procedures. Many other numbers could highlight the dedication that the department has for treating children and adults with heart disease. But in 1949, that kind of assessment could consider only a single metric: one doctor. It was Dr. Alexander Nadas, the first cardiologist ..read more

Determining how genetics contribute to common forms of strabismus has been a challenge for researchers. Small discoveries are considered meaningful progress. Boston Children’s researchers believe they’ve helped move the needle. They discovered that two types of strabismus — esotropia and exotropia — may have shared genetic risk factors. Duplications on the second, fourth, and tenth chromosomes that were present in patients with esotropia were also found in patients with exotropia. “Our long-term goal is to identify the underlying pathophysiology so that we can develop treatments that ..read more

Researchers have been chipping away at the genetic causes of congenital heart disease (CHD) for a couple of decades. About 45 percent of cases of CHD have an identifiable cause, including chromosomal abnormalities, genetic variants affecting protein-coding genes, and environmental factors. What about the rest of the cases of CHD? Noncoding DNA elements have long been thought to play a role in CHD, but few variants have been pinned down as causative. New work from the lab of cardiologist William Pu, MD, at Boston Children’s Hospital provides the strongest evidence to date that noncoding DNA con ..read more