Cincinnati Children’s Physician-Researcher Sing Sing Way To Receive 2016 E. Mead Johnson Award for Pediatric Research

Monday, February 01, 2016

Sing Sing Way, MD, PhD, the Pauline and Lawson Reed Chair in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, has won the E. Mead Johnson Award for Pediatric Research for 2016.

Way will receive the award, considered among the most prestigious honors in pediatric research, May 2 at the 2016 annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Baltimore, where he also will present a review of his research accomplishments.

Established in 1939, the award honors clinical and laboratory research achievements in pediatrics. Prior award recipients include Nobel laureates and six Cincinnati Children’s faculty: Albert Sabin, MD, earned the award in 1941 for his early work on polio research; Alan Jobe, MD, PhD, in 1986 for his work on lung maturation and lung injury in the fetus and newborn; Jeffrey Whitsett, MD, in 1988 for his work on lung surfactant; Arnold Strauss, MD, in 1990 for his work on the genetic basis of heart disease; Margaret Hostetter, MD, in 1995 for her work on the pathogenesis of Candida albicans; and Marc Rothenberg, MD, PhD, in 2007 for his work in the molecular mechanisms of allergic diseases.

Way is a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases – in particular prenatal infection and maternal-fetal immunology. His laboratory has made seminal contributions on the molecular-cellular mechanisms responsible for maternal-fetal immunological tolerance, fetal injury after prenatal infection, and infection susceptibility during pregnancy and in newborn infants. The long-term goals are improved therapies and preventive strategies against communicable pathogenic microbes and the harmful immunological consequences they trigger in susceptible individuals. 

“Dr. Way’s research has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of pregnancy complications and susceptibility to infection in newborns,” says Margaret Hostetter, MD, director of the Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation and chair of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati. “His groundbreaking work raises the exciting possibility of developing vaccines that protect against pregnancy complications.”

In a joint nomination letter, Hostetter and Lou Muglia, MD, PhD, co-director of the Cincinnati Children’s Perinatal Institute, called Way’s work “paradigm shifting and transformative.” 

“Considering that newborn infants are exceptionally vulnerable to long-term morbidity and mortality directly stemming from adverse complications in pregnancy, the exciting results from Dr. Way’s research have enormous direct translational impact for improving the health of infants and children,” they wrote.

Way earned a combined MD, PhD, at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1999. He completed a residency in pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco in 2001 and an infectious diseases fellowship at the University of Washington in 2004. He was on faculty at the University of Washington and the University of Minnesota before joining Cincinnati Children’s in 2012. His past and ongoing research have been supported by the National Institutes of Health, March of Dimes Foundation and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

Among his many honors and recognition for scientific contributions, Way earlier this year won the inaugural Gale and Ira Drukier Prize in Children’s Health Research from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. This award honors an early career pediatrician who, through his or her basic, translational or clinical research program has made important contributions toward improving the health of children or adolescents.

-30-

About Cincinnati Children's

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center ranks third in the nation among all Honor Roll hospitals in U.S. News & World Report’s 2015 Best Children’s Hospitals. It is also ranked in the top 10 for all 10 pediatric specialties, including a #1 ranking in pulmonology and #2 in cancer and in nephrology. Cincinnati Children’s, a non-profit organization, is one of the top three recipients of pediatric research grants from the National Institutes of Health, and a research and teaching affiliate of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. The medical center is internationally recognized for improving child health and transforming delivery of care through fully integrated, globally recognized research, education and innovation. Additional information can be found at www.cincinnatichildrens.org. Connect on the Cincinnati Children’s blog, via Facebook and on Twitter.