Evelina London Children's Charity supporting research growth at Evelina London

Evelina London Children's Charity has awarded grants totalling £175,00 to clinicians working in our services to support them to deliver and grow research.

With specialist children's services at Evelina London Children's Hospital and Royal Brompton Hospital and as a provider of children's community services in Lambeth and Southwark, we play an important role in driving forward new treatments and understanding about conditions.  

Our specialist children's research team are already working on more than 180 studies with academic partners worldwide. But we don’t want to stop there!

We want to continue growing our research and enhancing understanding around women's and children's health. Key to this is fostering and supporting our doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, pharmacists and others to develop their research skills, help them enhance their academic careers and to deliver research within their services.     

Evelina London Children's Charity’s new Paediatric Research Development Fund, coordinated by King's Health Partners, supports this. Our teams were given the opportunity to apply for funding, and four projects were successful.

Ming Lim, Evelina London's head of research, said: "We are hugely grateful to Evelina London Children's Charity and King's Health Partners for introducing this fund which will help us to develop the next generation of clinical researchers.

It's very important to us that we can support our teams to develop their academic careers and to carry our research as part of their roles. Not only does that mean we can grow our research capacity, it also means we can expand our research portfolio and the opportunities for children and families using our services to take part in research.

Hemanshoo Thakkar, a paediatric neonatal and colorectal surgeon at Evelina London, is one of the successful recipients of a charity grant through this new fund. His innovative project could improve surgical outcomes in children with anorectal malformations (birth defects in which the anus or rectum don't develop properly).

Hemanshoo specialises in treating children with anorectal malformations (ARMs), Hirschsprung's disease, and inflammatory bowel disease. Together with his colleagues Arlen Urquia and Haran Jogeesvaran who are paediatric radiologists, they aim to find out whether contrast-enhanced ultrasounds could help diagnose children with ARMs to evaluate their needs before they are due to have surgery.

"Anorectal malformations affect 1 in 5,000 people," explains Hemanshoo. "We want to try a new method called contrast-enhanced ultrasound to see if it can accurately show how the malformations are connected without using X-rays. If successful, this technique could make it safer for us to find out the critical information we need for precise surgical planning."

The potential benefits of this project are significant. By reducing reliance on X-ray imaging, the new method could lower radiation exposure for young patients and improve the accuracy of diagnosing ARMs, leading to more accurate and effective reconstructive surgeries.

The other projects receiving funding through the Paediatric Research Development Fund are:

Jonathan Cohen, head of service for paediatric immunology and infectious diseases at Evelina London: His project aims to develop better pneumonia tests for children in intensive care using metagenomics (exploring a mixture of DNA from multiple organisms) to quickly identify micro-organisms and their antibiotic resistance genes. This approach, combined with other investigations, aims to provide more precise information for faster, targeted treatments, ultimately improving patient outcomes, reducing hospital stays, and mitigating antibiotic resistance.

Trisha Vigneswaran, Evelina London's clinical lead for fetal cardiology: Her project focuses on heart imaging for fetuses with transposition of the great arteries (a serious, rare heart problem in which the 2 main arteries leaving the heart are reversed), measuring the responses of the baby in the womb and the mother when the mother is given extra oxygen from a face mask for a short period of time during fetal echocardiogram and MRI scans. Understanding how giving oxygen to pregnant women affects the placenta and fetal blood flow may improve delivery planning and newborn management, with the potential for this simple bedside test to be used by specialists nationwide.

Sam Irving, paediatric research physiologist: Her project aims to increase research activity by allied health professionals, healthcare scientists, pharmacists, psychologists and other professions allied to health across Evelina London. Sam will support staff to consider the options open to them and access suitable training and funding opportunities.