Damage to your child’s skin, whether due to an injury or a longer-term condition, may not only cause them discomfort, it can also lead to other medical complications. At Shriners Children's Boston, our director of research, Mehmet Toner, Ph.D., leads doctors and scientists as they work to find new ways to heal children with burns and other complex wounds and skin conditions.
Originally focused primarily on burns, the founding of The Howard Green Center for Children’s Skin Health and Research in 2016, has allowed our team to expand their research in regenerative medicine to include a number of conditions affecting the skin. The Howard Green Center is a first-of-its-kind center dedicated to regenerative treatments for children with burns, skin and dermatological conditions.
The work being done through this center has established Shriners Children's Boston as a premier destination for world-class care in pediatric burns, reconstructive, laser and plastic surgery and specialized wound care and skin disorders.
Our physicians and researchers are actively engaged in ongoing research and are continually developing new and innovative ways to treat and care for children. The research areas we're currently involved in include:
The Shriners Children's Boston research program is an integral part of the system-wide Shriners Children's research program, driven to find cures and treatments that allow us to provide exceptional care to children everywhere.
Colleen Ryan, M.D., FACS, and the burn outcomes lab is currently seeking parents of children who are burn survivors to participate in a survey-based study. This study is being used to evaluate different health outcomes related to your child's physical and social recovery after their burn injury.
If you are a parent of a child under the age of 5, who is recovering from a burn injury and are interested in contributing to this research by completing a one-time survey, please contact Gabby Grant at 617-371-4929 or email us for more information.
Damage to your child’s skin, whether due to an injury or a longer-term condition, may not only cause them discomfort, it can also lead to other medical complications. At Shriners Children's Boston, our director of research, Mehmet Toner, Ph.D., leads doctors and scientists as they work to find new ways to heal children with burns and other complex wounds and skin conditions.
Originally focused primarily on burns, the founding of The Howard Green Center for Children’s Skin Health and Research in 2016, has allowed our team to expand their research in regenerative medicine to include a number of conditions affecting the skin. The Howard Green Center is a first-of-its-kind center dedicated to regenerative treatments for children with burns, skin and dermatological conditions.
The work being done through this center has established Shriners Children's Boston as a premier destination for world-class care in pediatric burns, reconstructive, laser and plastic surgery and specialized wound care and skin disorders.
Our physicians and researchers are actively engaged in ongoing research and are continually developing new and innovative ways to treat and care for children. The research areas we're currently involved in include:
The Shriners Children's Boston research program is an integral part of the system-wide Shriners Children's research program, driven to find cures and treatments that allow us to provide exceptional care to children everywhere.
Colleen Ryan, M.D., FACS, and the burn outcomes lab is currently seeking parents of children who are burn survivors to participate in a survey-based study. This study is being used to evaluate different health outcomes related to your child's physical and social recovery after their burn injury.
If you are a parent of a child under the age of 5, who is recovering from a burn injury and are interested in contributing to this research by completing a one-time survey, please contact Gabby Grant at 617-371-4929 or email us for more information.
Survival rates for patients with burn injuries have improved dramatically over the past 50 years as a result of burn research. Doctors and scientists at Shriners Children's Boston are responsible for many of the advances in pediatric burn care. Studies we're working on include areas such as the body's reaction to severe stress and diagnostic tools that can be used at the bedside when treating critically injured children.
When your child comes to our hospital with a burn injury, our medical teams apply their years of clinical research and discoveries to their care. Shriners Children's current burn care research includes:
Complex Wounds and Skin Disorder Research
Row Content: Much of the research being done in regenerative medicine for burn care has naturally allowed our researchers to explore new ways to treat and manage a variety of other difficult wound and skin disorders not caused by burn injury. Some of the other skin conditions that we are applying our research to include:
Founded in 2016, The Howard Green Center for Children's Skin Health and Research is dedicated to making breakthroughs in regenerative medicine and developing innovative treatments that move from our lab to our patients’ bedsides quickly.
Howard Green, M.D. was a pioneer in regenerative medicine. He was the first to grow skin grafts using a patient’s own cells, one of the earliest examples of stem cell therapy. The first grafts from cultured skin were used to treat two patients with life-threatening burns at Shriners Children’s Boston in the early 1980s. The patients survived and Dr. Green’s discovery forever improved the life expectancy of patients with acute burns. He dedicated his career to furthering his understanding of skin regeneration to improve the outcomes for patients with devastating skin injuries and conditions.
Dr. Green held distinguished positions at New York University School of Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and most recently as the George Higginson Professor of Cell Biology and chairman of the department of cell biology at Harvard Medical School. He was a 2010 recipient of the prestigious Warren Alpert Foundation Prize.
Following Dr. Green's passing, his wife Mrs. Rosine Kauffmann Green helped Shriners Children's Boston establish this center to ensure that her late husband's legacy continues to live on in the city where so much of his research was conducted and where his work impacted so many lives.
Our research is made possible through funding and grants from:
We are grateful for the generous gift from Mrs. Rosine Kauffmann Green, which helped Shriners Children's Boston establish The Howard Green Center for Children’s Skin Health and Research in 2016. This center has become the cornerstone of our team's research and is a testament to Ms. Kauffmann Green's husband, Dr. Howard Green's commitment to regenerative medicine for skin conditions. Dr. Green's work has transformed the way that we care for patients with skin conditions.
Funding from our generous donors provides new hope and opportunities for children with burns, skin disorders and dermatological conditions.
Our team authors over 100 papers per year, with their work published in a number of prestigious journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science Reports, Nature Biotechnology and Nature Biomedical Engineering. Around 10% of the papers presented at the American Burn Association's annual meeting are written by Shriners Children’s Boston researchers.
Shriners Children's Boston is a leading research facility in biotechnical engineering, as well as other fields. With around 100 staff members, including a quarter from Harvard Medical School, each member of our team is highly accomplished in their respective field of study.
Our team conducts their research in a 30,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility, equipped with innovative technology like our positron emission tomography (PET) machine. This technology allows our researchers to explore metabolic disorders, post-injury psychological disorders and develop new approaches to targeted drug therapy.
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