Thomas D. Coates, section head of hematology and director of the Red Cell Defects Program in the Childrens Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and professor of pediatrics and pathology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, has received a four-year, $2,481,261 grant from the National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

“We will study the impact of blood viscosity on oxygen delivery in humans with sickle cell anemia,” said Coates, the principal investigator on the NIH grant.

Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is one of a dozen Basic and Translational Research Programs studying sickle cell disease in the United States – and the only sickle cell basic program on the West Coast.

The new basic and translational project utilizes expertise from collaborators in the areas of biomedical engineering, biophysics and hematology who are working to understand the principles that regulate blood flow in patients with sickle cell disease.

Parts of the research will directly address theoretical concepts related to blood viscosity and micro vascular circulation and also will attempt to develop techniques that can be used in the clinic to directly measure the sickling process and predict sudden cardiac death.

The project is multidisciplinary, involving physicians from Childrens Hospital Los Angeles as well as members of the faculty from both the Keck School and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. It continues a long-standing relationship between the Hemoglobinopathy Program at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and its research counterparts at USC.

Sickle cell disease is an inherited disorder of hemoglobin that causes normally flexible red blood cells to become very rigid and obstruct blood flow leading to ischemia, organ damage and ultimately, death.

Chronic transfusions markedly reduce sickle episodes and protect against recurring stroke and acute chest syndrome.