Program Accomplishments
The PiCoTraCS has been highly successful supporting fundamental bench-to-bedside (T1) translation. Sixty-six percent of the PiCoTraCS funds have supported this type of investigation. It is important to note that a separate pilot program in CERP has also funded T3 and T4 pilot projects. PiCoTraCS is increasingly receiving competitive applications from T2-T4 researchers and, through proposed efforts with CERP, anticipates intensified support of translation of evidenced-based practice improvement to ACTSI’s communities.
Specific milestones of ACTSI funding include the consideration by the PiCoTraCS Scientific Review Committee of 3,593 individual applications in 24 independent cycles of project review and the awarding of 93 grants, for an overall success rate of 2.6%. The amounts of each grant ranged from $15,000 to $147,000, based on the type of award, with the sum of funds totaling over $4M. Awardees have submitted 51 extramural grant applications based on preliminary data derived from PiCoTraCS’ support and 26 of these have been funded, totaling almost $11M.
Funded awards are distributed across all three partner institutions. Awards are distributed across 38 departments or divisions and five schools or colleges of the partner institutions, and span a spectrum of translational research topics (regenerative medicine; imaging; neurosciences; immunology and infectious diseases; endocrinology and metabolism; reproductive medicine; pediatrics; health disparities; cardiovascular; and others).
Other indicators of success include:
- 2 patents
- 4 patent applications under review
- 33 supported publications
- 21 submitted publications under review
- 51 submitted grant applications
- 26 funded grants totaling $10.8M
- 110 presentations at national / international meetings
- 12 accepted presentations at upcoming meetings
- 17 broadcast / print news stories
- 35 research awards / accolades
In addition to these quantifiable benchmarks of successful stewardship, PiCoTraCS has stimulated more intangible, and arguably more paradigm-shifting, impacts on the culture of clinical and translational research in Atlanta. The growing emphasis on team science has had repercussions throughout our academic communities, catalyzing new synergistic and collaborative inquiry and even affecting the faculty promotion policies at each of our major institutions.