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Pittsburgh Alpha-1 expert plans to make Children's Hospital one of the nation's top pediatric research centers
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
As he stands on the top floor of the new research center at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC complex in Lawrenceville, Dr. David Perlmutter can see a sweeping panorama of Oakland, Downtown and the North Hills.
But the scientific director of Children’s has really got his eye on more distant points: Boston, Cincinnati and Philadelphia—the three pediatric research centers that he believes are at the top of the heap in the United States and whose company he has been pushing to join.
And there is solid evidence that Children’s Hospital is fast on its way to getting there.
From fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2008, its research funding from the National Institutes of Health rose from $7 million to $26.7 million, a 280 percent increase and one of the fastest growth rates in the nation. In the last year alone, he said, Children’s got an 11 percent increase in NIH funding at a time when the federal agency had cut funds to many other institutions.
