The Neonatal-Perinatal Research Laboratory of the Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine actively studies the area of neonatal nutrition and common, critical inflammatory disorders of the newborn. The nutrition studies, led by Dr. Richard Schanler, focus on the compositional changes in human milk and the effect of processing on human milk, as well as the clinical benefits of expressed human milk in the extremely premature infant. The studies on inflammation start with the fetal inflammatory response syndrome and its relationship to the development of chronic lung disease and brain injury after birth in premature infants.
 
The investigators are working on potential novel anti-inflammatory therapies, specifically potential cytokine and gene therapies. The nutritional and anti-inflammatory studies complement each other with the goal to provide better outcomes for infants in the neonatal intensive care unit.
 
Dr. Dennis Davidson is exploring the use of interleukin-10 and its cellular and molecular actions in neutrophils and monocytes of the newborn. Interleukin-10 is an anti-inflammatory cytokine and its mechanisms of action may lead to new therapies for serious inflammatory disorders in the perinatal period, such as the fetal inflammatory response, preterm labor, chronic lung disease and white matter brain injury.