On Thursday, May 28, Father's Day Council Tucson held their 21st Annual 'Father of the Year' Awards Gala at Loews Ventana Canyon. It was a wonderful event, honoring five outstanding fathers from the Tucson community, with all proceeds funding type 1 diabetes research and endowment at the Steele Center. See photos

For the first time in 16 years, the annual PANDA "Children Helping Children" Fashion Show and Luncheon gross revenues exceeded $1 million, all to support pediatric research efforts at the UA Steele Children's Research Center. The luncheon and fashion show took place at The Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale on April 25, and was attended by nearly 1,000 people. Fifty-eight children  participated in the fashion show, modeling fashions from Splendid, Converse, Garage and Peek, to the theme, "When You Wish Upon a Star." Read more | See photos 

University of Arizona researchers have developed a novel drug and delivery system to treat inflammation and ulcerations in the colon. The system, a carrier drug the research team has termed a "molecular truck," shows promise in treating ulcerative colitis, one of the two forms of inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD. Read more | UA News | Drug Discovery & Development | Medical Express | The Daily Wildcat 

The UA Steele Center received a four-year, $2 million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to continue its Arizona Developmental Disabilities Surveillance Program. The program, which has conducted autism spectrum disorders surveillance in Arizona since 2000 as part of the Autism and Developmental Disability Monitoring Network, is part of a multisite effort to track such disorders and also intellectual disabilities among U.S. schoolchildren. Read more 

Researchers at the UA Steele Center made an unexpected discovery into the role of NHE8, a sodium/hydrogen exchanger protein.The research was led by Fayez K. Ghishan, MD, Professor and Head, Department of Pediatrics, and Steele Center researcher Hua Xu, PhD, Associate Professor, UA Department of Pediatrics. They collaborated with Mingwu Wang, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, UA Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Science. NHEs are a group of membrane proteins that function to exchange extracellular sodium (Na+) for intracellular hydrogen (H+). NHE proteins contribute to many physiological functions, such as intracellular (within cells) acidic (pH) regulation, cell volume regulation and sodium absorption. They play an important role by transporting sodium and electrolytes through the gastrointestinal tract. Read more  

Banner Children's - Diamond Children's Medical Center was one of 38 children's hospitals in the United States and Canada to participate in a large-scale study that has shown no significant difference in outcomes for children who received therapeutic hypothermia and children who maintained a normal body temperature after suffering cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest in children can often be a catastrophic event, resulting in brain injury, other long-term neurological disabilities or even death.Therapeutic hypothermia can improve survival and health outcomes for adults after cardiac arrest and also for newborns with brain injury due to a lack of oxygen at birth. Until now, this treatment has not been studied in infants or children admitted to hospitals with cardiac arrest. Read more  

Diamond Children's received a donation of $115,000 from the Abbett Family Foundation. Foundation trustees Jeffrey Abbett, his sister, Renee Abbett, and Tim Wilcox, principal, Sonora Investment Management, visited Diamond Children's on January 15 to acknowledge the donation, which was made in December. Read more