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TownHall: Pediatric Research Breakthroughs and Changes with Vittorio Gallo

Vittorio Gallo: Science is a team sport and mentorship is really how we pass the baton to the next generation.

Bill Russell: My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health.

Where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time. Our town hall show is designed to bring insights from practitioners and leaders. on the front lines of healthcare. .

Alright, let's jump right into today's episode.

Zafar Chaudry: Welcome to Town Hall, a production of this Week Health. I'm Dr. Zafar Chaudry. I'm the Chief Digital AI and Information Officer at Seattle Children's, and I'm very honored to be joined by Dr. Vittorio Gallo, who is our Senior Vice President, chief Scientific Officer for our Seattle Children's Research Institute.

Vittorio Gallo: Good morning, Zafar. Well, thank you very much.

Zafar Chaudry: Yeah, thanks for joining. So we're gonna have a fun 20 minutes or so asking a few questions, having a little back and forth discussion.

Yeah. And we wanted to bring more visibility to the innovating pediatric research that we are doing at Seattle Children's, that your teams are leading. And it's quite interesting because you are also actively doing your own research and have been doing so for many years. So as the Chief Scientific Officer, what are your top research priorities for the coming year and how do you envision advancing the mission?

Of your institute.

As Chief Scientific Officer at Seattle Children's at a high level, my top priorities are centered on accelerating discovery in areas where we can make the greatest impact for children. So the children and children, child health is the focus. And this includes strengthening our focus on different areas of research, starting from pediatric cancer, genetic diseases, neurodevelopmental disorders, and we want to continue to develop areas of strengths in particular data science, precision medicine, and community health.

We are all part of a pediatric academic center, so it's really important that we continue to focus on our mission, which is to generate scientific discoveries that directly improve the lives of children and their families.

Zafar Chaudry: Yeah. Absolutely. Such an important work. I mean, the future of how we take care of kids directly lies with research.

Yeah. And as your institute is doing a lot of innovative therapies that are currently being developed, what do you think are the particular new innovations that people should be on the lookout for?

I think we will continue to be at the cutting edge of the leading edge of developing new therapies in pediatrics. First of all in the area of cell and gene therapy. We are leading cell immunotherapy for pediatric cancer and for autoimmune disorders.

We have recently opened a new clinical trials for cell immunotherapy in pediatric lupus, and this is the first. Clinical trial for pediatric lupus. In the area of vaccine development. We are leading in the development of malaria vaccines, particularly in vaccine strategies that target liver infection in the area of neonatal brain injury and neurodevelopmental disorders.

So these are all very advanced therapies. We are really at the leading edge and we are. Integrating findings in research labs and research teams directly in clinical and translational applications. Another area that is really important for us is, sudden unexpected infant death, SUID.

And this is really where the convergence of neuroscience, genomics, and regenerative medicine offers unprecedented opportunities to change the trajectory of early life brain injuries and developmental disorders. So there are a lot of opportunities and we continue to be at the leading edge.

Now, a lot of the audience for this week health are technologists like myself many of which spend their time supporting research institutes in the adult and pediatric space. What would your or advice be to those leaders in technology on how they can better support research into the future?

Vittorio Gallo: Well, I see technologies and everything that you do as fundamentally important. So it is supporting, but I think that the way that research has been changing now in the past five to 10 years, technologies and everything that you do are integral part of research it. I don't see that as a exclusively supporting role, but more and more integrated.

So emerging technologies such as single cell genomics, artificial intelligence. Organoids and all in vitro applications will require a direct integration and synergy between what you all do and what researchers do. And I think this will continue. These AI models and these new platforms will continue to revolutionize how we understand and treat pediatric diseases.

They're exposed to different stimuli and this, they adapt to stimuli, but also they continuously change in their exposure. So this is gonna be really important to take into considerations in everything that we design, in terms of therapies in the future. So I think that over the next decade. We will include all these aspects in when in pediatric research, but we'll also see more personalized, preventive, and participatory approaches to child health.

Zafar Chaudry: And I think you brought up some very interesting points, right? So everything seems to now be data driven, and then you hit the nail on the head with the whole, this wouldn't be a conversation if we didn't mention AI a few times.

And so when you take all of the data that is being generated. And of course my team sees that because we store the data that comes from research, it's masses, amounts of data that could lead to the next breakthrough, the next innovation, but without us arming ourselves with the right tools that allow those researchers and PIs.

And that's really shifting a, the cost model. From a technology and how that technology supports research. But also I've certainly seen with interacting with the researchers at our institute, their technical skills have shifted too. They're coming to us with more technology skills than I've ever seen before.

They're more talking about using data. They're talking about open source, they're talking about language writing algorithms. And I know you have your own research as well, and I know you are using your own data, so could you share how you've used some of your data to, develop breakthroughs in your own personal research space.

Data sets and huge amount of data that we will continue to store and analyze, and particularly in pediatrics as you mentioned. That's a significant challenge because when we talk about pediatrics and we talk about pediatrics. Studies, obviously these are longitudinal studies, these are multi-year studies, and we have to follow developmental trajectory in children, so that increases our needs for capacity.

There is also an issue about vertical integration. We've been really good at collecting data in many different areas. If I, as a neuroscientist, going back to your. Question. If I think about how neuroscience has evolved we now have a lot of data on the molecular characteristics of different cells in the brain.

And we're trying to figure out how we [00:13:00] can integrate this information because now even in my own lab, if I look at how the research has changed just a few years ago , we were dealing, we limited dataset and now we have huge data in metabolomics, genomics.

We are doing spatial transcriptomics to look at. Spatial distributions of gene expression in the brain during development. And we are doing a lot more electrophysiological characterization of the cells, but we still have to develop new tools to integrate all this information.

Zafar Chaudry: Yeah, it makes complete sense.

So if you were providing advice to my audience who traditionally are all IT folks, right? What could they do? To better support their researchers in their own organizations. What advice would you give them?

I think for me that is particularly important as a pediatric researcher, and it's really a core part of my scientific philosophy. So we wanna make sure that we ensure successful translation. We optimize translation because we want to invest in infrastructure that supports early stage discovery. Through to first in human studies.

Platforms and new digital solutions that can help this translation. So what I'm thinking about is how technology can synergize with all of us to build this kind of seamless continuum where discovery and clinical care can inform and enhance each other. I think we are in a unique environment to do that, and particularly as Seattle Children's we can really accomplish this goal as we are one of the top pediatric academic centers in the country and we are excellent both in clinical care and research and in technology.

Of course.

Zafar Chaudry: any specific projects you are looking at in the future that you are excited about?

I think that, applications of AI and how we expand data science from a broad perspective is something that I have been focusing on for a while. And you and I have been developing new initiatives together, and I think this is going to be. A project that will support both research and clinical care at Seattle Children's. So I'm thinking about projects from a research perspective, projects that will bring value. How can research bring value at a system level? How can research make an impact at a system level? Yes.

Take that leap of faith, make investments in those areas and they, these are going to be longer term invest to save type of programs, right? You won't see potentially benefits on day one, the day 180, you'll start seeing things happen. Intelligence coming from looking at that data that can help inform how your health system.

For every health system to be more innovative. It's an exploding model. Of capability that I haven't seen in the 39 years I've been doing this. It's just astronomically growing. And if you do use these tools, your personal self the AI is becoming so smart on a weekly basis that it's mind boggling in terms of what that capability could be.

I don't see a world now where we will go back to how we used to do things. I think people will continue to push ahead, and this is across every industry, not just healthcare. And what worries me the most is healthcare tends to always be behind. In terms of adopting or taking that leap of faith. So my hope is that health systems will want to do that.

And the same thing we're working on together at our health system, right, is pushing everyone to see that forward thinking vision, to then be able to do more innovation using that marriage between technology, data science, as you said, research and clinical medicine.

I couldn't agree more. I mean, everything that you say resonates completely with me.

To promote early diagnosis and screening, for example, personalized treatment plans and looking at predicted analytics for critical care. And even in the area, one of the areas that are closer to my interest, the behavior and developmental health, there has been. Significant applications of AI in identifying and characterizing neurodevelopmental disorders.

So we have an opportunity to reach out to families in a very different way from the way that we used to. And I agree with you that we are not going back. This is now the trajectory and how we are moving forward. Remote care and telehealth is another example that will continue to develop.

So I think that. There is a lot that we can continue to do, and this is an evolving landscape and research will continue to contribute and the leading pediatric academic centers of the future will be those centers where research continues to bring value to the system, to the entire system, not only in research, but also in clinical care.

Well, thank you. So as we wrap up Dr. Gallo, what advice would you give young scientists who are just entering this field?

Vittorio Gallo: it's very challenging right now. We are all aware of the challenges that research and pediatrics in general and pediatric research are experiencing. So, we need to keep in mind.

It's going to be really important to think about mentorship and how we continue to mentor the next generations. And this has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my career. I've mentored many clinicians and many researchers, and I see this as a very vital part of my role here.

And also surround yourself with people who not only challenge you, but also support you in equal measures. So peer mentorship is really important. Continue to build networks, continue to stay engaged with other young researchers and clinicians. Science is a team sport and mentorship is really how we pass the baton to the next generation.

And collaborate more than we typically like to do. So I would highly recommend that if you working in an organization that has a research function, try and spend time with as many people as you can as leaders in the health IT space. Learn what they do, attend some of the very interesting lectures. I've certainly learned that if you attend lectures, those lectures are at lunch and lunch is free.

Your dedication to advancing innovative therapies and fostering collaborative efforts. It's truly inspiring and we look forward to seeing an incredible impact that the work makes, that we can tell the national community about and how we can all improve the lives of kiddos for the future.

Bill Russell: Thanks for listening to this week's Town Hall. A big thanks to our hosts and content creators. We really couldn't do it without them. We hope that you're going to share this podcast with a peer or a friend. It's a great chance to discuss and even establish a mentoring relationship along the way.

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