eRoundup for 08/07/09

CTSA consortium efforts are yielding substantial output this year. In the past few months, several Key Function Committees (KFCs) finalized the following products, advancing progress towards the consortium's five strategic goals:

• The Education and Career Development KFC developed core competencies that will become the foundation for competency-based educational curricula for training clinician-scientists in the discipline of clinical and translational science.

• The Public-Private Partnership KFC launched a web-based intellectual property search engine. The CTSA-IP Portal, which is currently a pilot test site, lists all licensable technologies for 11 CTSAs and the NIH intramural programs. This site allows for bundling of CTSA IP and can be searched by key word and disease area. 

• The Community Engagement KFC published Best Practices in Community Engagement, a report summarizing the CTSA consortium's series of regional and national workshops and conferences on community engagement from 2007 through 2008.
  • The Community Engagement KFC also has a paper in press titled Clinical Translational Science Awards and Community Engagement: Now is the Time to Mainstream Prevention into the Nation's Health Research Agenda. The paper will be published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.

• A recent paper Synergies and Distinctions Between Computational Disciplines in Biomedical Research by a number of members of the CTSA consortium was published in the July 2009 issue of Academic Medicine on behalf of the CTSA Biomedical Informatics KFC. The paper describes the complementary but distinct roles of operational information technology (IT), research IT, computer science, and biomedical informatics. It also offers recommendations for administrative structures that can help maximize the benefits of computation to biomedical research within academic health centers.

• The Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Research Design KFC expanded CTSpedia, an online collection of best practices, tools, educational materials, and other items about biostatistics, ethics, and research design. Created by the University of California, San Francisco, CTSpedia also features an Ask the Experts forum and provides links to statistical tools.

• To facilitate resource sharing and networking among CTSA consortium members, the Communications KFC is developing an online ShareCenter. Made possible through an NCRR Administrative Supplement, ShareCenter draws on the utility and popularity of social networking websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. The user-friendly ShareCenter offers a web-based forum to submit requests, begin discussions about resource needs or projects in development, and provide feedback.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health, has named William D. Matthew, PhD, as director of its Office of Translational Research (OTR). Read more... 

Rafi Ahmed, PhD, ACTSI investigator, director of the Emory Vaccine Center, and a GRA Eminent Scholar, was quoted on TechJournalSouth.com in the article Emory scientists find fast way to diagnose and target viral infections... on July 29 and in Science Daily in the article New, faster way to diagnose, fight flu on August 2. Viola Vaccarino, MD, PhD, ACTSI investigator and professor of medicine (cardiology) at Emory University School of Medicine was quoted on HealthNewsDigest.com in the article Gene variant protects from depression in women only on August 5. 

The ACTSI's Translational Technologies & Resources (TTR) program is pleased to announce a new RFA to use available funds for new technologies capital investments. One primary focus of the ACTSI is to orchestrate the advancement, selection, and funding of promising new technology. The TTR program established a Proof-of-Principle Technology Fund which, with additional support from the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA), facilitates a focused approach to identifying and investing in new, enabling technologies aligned with the ACTSI strategic goals. The application deadline is September 1. See RFA for more details.

A new fertility preservation RFA, Fertility Preservation Research: Advancing Beyond Technology (R01) (RFA-HD-09-009), has been published by the NIH and CDC. Please click here http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-HD-09-009.html for details. The application is due on October 20.

The HMO Research Network is planning to respond to this announcement.  If there are any interested partners, please feel free to contact Robert L. Davis, MD, MPH, Director of Research for the Center for Health Research, Southeast, (404) 364-7197 or Robert.L.Davis@kp.org.

AHRQ invites applications to develop a prospective clinical registry of orthopedic devices, drugs, and procedures through a practice-based research collaborative and clinical and outcomes data resource (P50 grant mechanism). The goal of this registry initiative is to support the development of a sustainable data infrastructure and to conduct rigorous clinical and scientific research including comparative effectiveness and safety research.  AHRQ envisions utilizing a practice based orthopedic registry across a broad provider network as one of the potentially most effective and productive approaches to develop scientific evidence regarding the short and long term benefits and harms of implantable orthopedic devices and other related services. The registry will be a model and basis for other national device and procedure registries and will actively disseminate study results into clinical practice. The application is due on September 23. For more information please click here.

Northwestern University will host a Science of Team Science Conference on April 21-23, 2010. The Discipline of Team Science promotes team-based research by working closely with investigators to examine the process by which research teams organize themselves. This includes how they think and do their work together to achieve research breakthroughs that would not be attainable by individual or additive efforts. Northwestern's Office of Research Team Support (ORTS) is a champion of this emerging field of study.  For more information, email Conference Chair Holly Falk-Krzesinski, PhD, Northwestern University, or call (847) 491-1074. 

Current medical students at Emory University School of Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM), and other health professional trainees pursuing doctoral degrees in public health, biomedical engineering, nursing and other fields at Emory, MSM and GA Tech can apply for short-term (3 month) stipends ($5,190 of salary support) funded by the Research Education, Training and Career Development (RETCD) program of the ACTSI. This mechanism will support medical and graduate students who are interested in a short course program focused on clinical and/or translational research under the mentorship of a successful, federally funded faculty mentor. Application for the short-term training program includes several components that should be submitted electronically by emailing TL1Applications@erooms.emory.edu. For more information please visit www.atlantactsi.org/areas/retcd/documents/TL1_three-month_program-9-30-08_FINAL.pdf.

The 5,000-square foot Emory-GA Tech Center for Health Discovery and Well Being is located on the 18th floor of the Emory Midtown Medical Office Tower. The center is a hospital-based ACTSI Clinical Interaction Site and provides comprehensive support for clinical investigation with its various core resources and facilities. Physical, medical and lifestyle histories, and the results of up to 50 different blood and plasma tests that target known critical predictors of health and illness are collected from healthy participants at the center. Measures of inflammation, immune health, metabolic health, and DNA analysis for genes that confer risk are used to construct an integrated definition of current health that predicts future health. Participants in the Center for Health Discovery and Well Being also serve as research partners, providing new information on risk and participating in clinical trials that test predictive models and novel interventions. The scientific core is a joint Emory-Georgia Tech program collaborating with Georgia Tech's Health Systems Institute and systems biology program, the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory, and several programs within Emory College and the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, including the Emory program in computational and life sciences. The Center for Health Discovery and Well Being provides the infrastructure necessary for Emory, MSM, and Georgia Tech faculty to conduct clinical research. For more information please click here. To learn how to submit a protocol click here.