Our Consortium
About PFN-STRIDE
PFN-STRIDE will leverage the existing pediatric fungal network (PFN), the largest and most productive pediatric consortium dedicated to improving the outcomes of IFDs in pediatric patients. Established in 2005, the PFN is currently composed of pediatric academic centers across the United States, each with recognized leaders in pediatric IFD serving as site investigators. Over 35 pediatric academic centers have participated in recent R01-funded PFN prospective cohort studies. PFN-STRIDE is part of the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network (RDCRN) funded by the National Institutes of Health. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute direct the operations of PFN-STRIDE by providing research and administrative support to participating PFN sites.
Advancing Pediatric IFD Research
The rare disease clinical research consortium (RDCRC) Pediatric Fungal Network Study of Rare Invasive Fungal DisEases in Immunocompromised Pediatric Patients (PFN-STRIDE) invites formal and informal collaborations to advance research in pediatric IFDs. Indeed, the pediatric fungal network (PFN) was established to address the fundamental lack of pediatric-specific data on the epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes of pediatric IFD and the massive impact of IFD on the growing number of immunocompromised pediatric patients.
PFN-STRIDE represents a comprehensive vision for harnessing the existing PFN infrastructure to simultaneously improve our understanding of the longer-term outcomes of different types of IFD, fill crucial knowledge gaps regarding the genetics of the pathogens and their susceptibility to existing and novel antifungal agents, link this translational knowledge about the organisms with clinical outcomes, and hasten discovery of novel diagnostic approaches to improve time to diagnosis. Patient and caregiver insights specific to pediatric IFD, made possible through a robust never before implemented patient advocacy plan, will guide the development and completion of these goals.
PFN-STRIDE will establish a cohort of pediatric patients that will be followed over time, including approximately 300 patients with rare invasive fungal diseases and 300 matched controls.
A comprehensive set of clinical, imaging, biomarker, and laboratory data will be collected; research blood specimens will also be collected from enrolled IFD patients and a subset of matched controls.
We will also assemble fungal pathogens from patients with newly diagnosed IFD and from existing pathogen biobanks into a central biorepository and subject them to genomic sequencing and susceptibility testing which will serve as a resource for future studies to design targeted therapies or determine the effectiveness of antifungal therapy approaches.
Lastly, we will establish an image repository of chest computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging from pediatric patients at risk of developing IFDs. Concurrently we will establish a biorepository of RNA and plasma specimens captured from patients enrolled to this study and previous PFN studies. This will allow us to develop novel AI approaches to interpret imaging data and novel diagnostic tests using RNA signature profiling, respectively.
The data generated by all PFN-STRIDE studies will be available for pilot studies within the PFN-STRIDE pilot grant and career development programs whose aim is to train young investigators in pediatric IFD research.