Therapeutic Areas

Cardiology/Vascular Diseases
Endocrinology
Family Medicine
Gastroenterology
Genetic Disease
Hematology
Immunology
Infections and Infectious Diseases
Internal Medicine
Nephrology
Neurology
Oncology
Orthopedics/Orthopedic Surgery
Pediatrics/Neonatology
Psychiatry/Psychology
Pulmonary/Respiratory Diseases
Rheumatology
Vaccines

Center Overview

As part of CHOC's mission; "To nurture, advance, and protect the health and well-being of children", Children's Hospital of Orange County is committed to both basic science and clinical research. Located in California, south of Los Angeles, CHOC is recognized as a world-class, pediatric healthcare provider. CHOC serves an ethnically diverse community that includes one of the largest demographics of children in the nation. CHOC and CHOC's south Orange County sister hospital, CHOC at Mission, are the only hospitals in Orange County exclusively serving infants, children, and adolescents. Clinical trial options are part of CHOC's continuum of care. To meet the needs of our patients, healthcare service providers and pharmaceutical sponsors, in 2002 CHOC established the Clinical Research Center as part of the CHOC Research Institute.

The Center is customer focused, quality based and supports over 75 active clinical research studies across a wide range of therapeutic areas.

Clinical Research Experience

Experienced general pediatric and pediatric subspecialty faculty:

• Access to a large, ethnically diverse pediatric patient population
• Centralized clinical trials administration; one contact, simplified, timely contract and budget negotiation
• Exclusive industry track IRB designed to meet the fast turn-around needs of industry sponsors
• Commitment to excellence through quality assurance
• Hospital facilities for in-patient, pharmacokinetic studies
• Core laboratory support
• The Highest ethical standards
• Access to on-site basic research scientists and state-of-the-art molecular biology research laboratories
• Unrelated Cord Blood Bank

Facility Description

CHOC is a 202-bed, not-for profit, public benefit pediatric hospital located in the city of Orange, California. Founded in 1964, CHOC offers nearly every pediatric subspecialty and provides a full spectrum of health care services ranging from access to prevention programs for healthy children to the most advanced medical care for those with serious illness, including clinical trial options. Recognizing the importance and growing need for research in pediatrics, CHOC opened a five-story research building on the CHOC campus in 1990. The building houses the Research Institute and includes general and subspecialty pediatric clinics, offices and administrative support for the Clinical Research Center. Twelve thousand square feet of the research building are dedicated to state-of-the-art, fully equipped basic science and clinical research laboratories. Laboratories include core facilities for biosafety level II containment, flow cytometry, molecular and cell biology. The Hospital provides laboratory support and beds for Clinical Research Center, in-patient, Phase I, pharmacokinetics studies.

Investigator Experience

Endocrinology:

• Susan Clark, MD
• Mark Daniels, MD
• Tim Flannery, MD
• Nikta Forghani, MD
• Lien Trinh, MD

Gastroenterology:

• Kenneth Grant, MD
• Mitchell Katz, MD
• Bassam Younes, MDD

Genetics:

• Virginia Kimonis, MD

Hematology:

• Loan Hsieh, MD
• Diane Nugent, MD
• Geetha Puthenveetil, MD
• Amit Soni, MDD

Infectious Disease:

• Felice Adler-Shohet, MD
• Antonio Arrieta, MD
• Negar Ashouri, MD
• Delma Nieves, MD
• Jasjit Singh, MD

Metabolic:

• Jose Abdenur, MD
• Richard Chang, MD
• Raymond Wang, MD

Nephrology:

• Dorit Ben-Ezer, MD

• Ira Lott, MD
• Ying Peng, MD

Neurosurgery:

• William Loudon, MD
• Michael Muhonen, MD

Oncology:

• Samuel Esparza, MD
• Ivan Kirov, MD
• Steven Neudorf, MD
• Leonard Sender, MD
• Violet Shen, MD
• Lillibeth Torno, MD

Orthopedics:

• Afshim Aminian, MD
• Samuel Rosenfeld, MD

Otoloaryngology:

• Gurpreet Ahuja, MD

Psychology:

• Heather Huszti, PhD
• Hoang Wayne Nguyen, MD

Pulmonary/Respiratory:

• Dan Cooper, MD
• David Hicks, MD
• Bruce Nickerson, MD

Rheumatology:

• Sheryl Boon, MD

Surgery:

• Mustafa Kabeer, MD

Staff Expertise

Clinical Research Center staff represent CHOC's core values of Excellence, Compassion, Innovation, Collaboration and Service. Experienced, qualified and competent staff provide customer focused, quality based support for the Center.

• Certified Clinical Research Coordinators
• Nurse specialists and nurse practitioners
• Research pharmacists
• Research nurses
• Respiratory therapists
• Behavioral therapists

Patient Demographics

Orange County is home to 3.0 million people. Economically and ethnically diverse, nearly 30% of the County's population are children or adolescents; 23% are 14-years or younger. Over 30% of the County's population are Hispanic or Latino and about 14% are Asian. CHOC is a not-for profit, public benefit hospital located in the city of Orange.

Other Information

The CHOC Research Institute receives federal funding, including funding from the NIH, for basic science research. Experienced basic research scientists at CHOC are available for collaboration and protocol development for clinical research studies. CHOC currently has state-of-the-art, wet laboratory space available for qualified research on a contract basis.

Contact Center

If you are interested in contacting this center to discuss placing a clinical trial there, please complete and send the email form below. A representative from the research center will then follow up with you.