Stephen P. Spielberg, MD, PhD, formerly Dean and Vice President for Health Affairs at Dartmouth Medical School and one of the nation's best-known specialists in pediatric pharmacology, has joined the staff at Children's Mercy as Director of the new Center for Personalized Medicine and Therapeutic Innovation. Dr. Spielberg will also hold the Marion Merrell Dow Endowed Chair in Pediatric Pharmacogenetics and a professorial appointment at the UMKC School of Medicine.
Dr. Spielberg has had 30 years' experience in academic and industry clinical pharmacology and therapeutics, and currently also serves as Principal Investigator for the Institute for Pediatric Innovation, a non-profit organization focused on developing improved medicines and devices to meet the therapeutic needs of children. (Children's Mercy is one of the three founding members of the Consortium of Pediatric Hospitals within IPI, along with Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University and Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland.)
The new Center for Personalized Medicine will emanate from the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Pharmacology and Medical Toxicology and will reach across medical and professional disciplines within Children's Mercy to create a novel program dedicated to delivering state-of-the-art drug therapy to our patients, fueled by translating discoveries to impactful treatment decisions. The Center has been borne out of the exemplary program in Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology developed at the hospital during the past 12 years.
Dr. Spielberg:
Dr. Spielberg comes to Children's Mercy from Dartmouth Medical School, where he served as professor of pediatrics and professor of pharmacology and toxicology. His academic research has focused on human pharmacogenetics, mechanisms of idiosyncratic adverse drug reactions (intense clinical and genetic investigation), and on developmental pharmacology and pediatric clinical trials. In industry, he was in involved in basic research in pharmacogenetics (Merck), and then responsible for pediatric clinical trials internationally (Johnson & Johnson). Resulting outcomes include over 130 publications, and more than half a dozen medications evaluated and labeled for use in children. He was instrumental in the passage of the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act in the US, led the international effort to create ICH E-11, a process to harmonize pediatric clinical trials among the EU, the US, and Japan, and has participated in IOM initiatives in the ethical conduct of clinical trials in children. He has received multiple awards from FDA, ASCPT, and PhRMA Foundation for these contributions. He has taught therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Hospital for Sick Children (University of Toronto), and Dartmouth Medical School, and as Dean of Dartmouth Medical School and as President of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics worked nationally and internationally on issues of education in rational therapeutics. He is on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for the NIH, the Executive Board of Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (FDA, FNIH, PhRMA), member of the Council of the Convention of the US Pharmacopeia, and was President of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (2006). Dr. Spielberg received his MD and a PhD in pharmacology from the University of Chicago, completed his pediatric residency at Children's Hospital, Boston and a post-doctoral fellowship in human biochemical genetics at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Children's Mercy's Center for Personalized Medicine and Therapeutic Innovation:
Being involved in the development of new medicines and in their real life clinical use, Dr. Spielberg has focused on the future of therapeutics, and the increasing emphasis on "personalized medicine". If we are to move into an improved era of diagnosis and therapeutics, one aimed at "personalized or individualized" medicine, at more "precise" medicine, we will need to bring together clinicians and scientists, those involved in discovering and developing medicines with those who use those medicines in patients on a daily basis. As we move forward, we need to validate how we use new knowledge, to do "community-based" or "living laboratory" experiments, thoughtfully analyzing the impact of advancing genomic insights in the real world of patients.
"Personalized Medicine" is not new. Patients, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care professionals always have wanted care to be "individualized", focused on "me as a patient", or "this specific person who seeks my help". What has changed is the remarkable advance of science, particularly in genetics, that has improved our understanding of what makes each of us unique. And in treating children, we need to add "development" to genetics and environment as factors which impact a patient's response to therapeutic interventions. The remarkable spectrum of development from infancy through toddlers, pre-school, pre-pubertal and post-pubertal is the wonderful province of pediatrics.
At Children's Mercy Hospital, we have the opportunity to create a "living laboratory" - questions coming from the clinical and basic science side of the equation, testing hypotheses about the utility and validity of using genomic information to improve diagnosis and the entire process of pharmacology and therapeutics. We can impact drug discovery through drug development, envisioning and validating how new medicines used in the context of improved diagnostic precision can get "the right medicine, at the right dose to the right patient". Coupled with the outstanding medical and surgical services of the only pediatric medical center in a 250 mile radius of Kansas City, the Center for Personalized Medicine and Innovative Therapeutics will be devoted to translating discovery into new approaches to drug therapy that will be individualized to the unique needs and makeup of our patients . We are poised to work together, and with leaders around the world, to advance safe and effective pediatric therapeutics.
Gregory L. Kearns, Pharm.D., Ph.D.
Marion Merrell Dow/Missouri Chair of Medical Research
Professor of Pediatrics and Pharmacology, UMKC
Chairman, Department of Medical Research
Associate Chairman, Department of Pediatrics
Director, Pediatric Pharmacology Research Unit