Research Accelerator: Stimulating Scientists to Step Up the Pace ... Advancing Translational Science, the ITM has funded
Chicago Pediatrics Monthly
January 2015
Research Accelerator: Stimulating Scientists to Step Up the Pace The Institute for Translation Medicine may be one of University of Chicago’s best kept secrets. “We give away pilot funding and research services—lots of it—yet many faculty and trainees have no idea we’re here,” says Lainie Ross, co‐director of the ITM. Funded with more than $50 million by the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the National Institutes of Health/National Center for Advancing Translational Science, the ITM has funded, trained, and provided research services to more than 1,800 UChicago investigators since 2007. The ITM is part of a consortium of 62 research institutions that receive funding from CTSA; additional financial support is provided by UChicago. The primary goal of the ITM is to accelerate translational research, which it does in multiple ways. The ITM provides funding for pilot projects that might never have otherwise attracted interest from major granting organizations; offers services to prevent research from getting bogged down for want of, say, an electron microscope or genome sequencing; connects researchers with collaborators in the community and at other research institutions; and consults on how to get larger grants approved by the NIH and other funding agencies. “We can help make your study robust and scientifically sound and assist you in carrying out your research quickly and ethically,” says Ross. ITM pilot funds cover all stages of the translational medicine spectrum and are available to investigators at every stage of their careers. The larger (~$40,000) awards are intended as seed funding for promising translational and clinical research projects, allowing researchers to generate preliminary data required to obtain subsequent funding from NIH and other organizations. In 2012, for example, Daniel Johnson received a pilot award to develop Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO‐Chicago), clinical training sessions using videoconferencing to connect UCM subspecialists with primary care providers in federally qualified health centers in Chicago. Since then, Johnson has received more than $876,000 in support from eight organizations and has been funded for $1.55 million in the first year of a four‐year grant from the CDC to develop a surveillance system for identifying and tracking the outcomes of patients in Chicago with hepatitis C. Dana Suskind used both a pilot award and a K‐fellowship to study the language development disparity she saw among her patients from poor families. Two years later, she received a three‐year Institute of Education Sciences award to test her educational intervention program for parents, and she’s since been awarded a U.S. Department of Education grant to further develop her program’s curriculum. More recently, Dorit Koren received a pilot award to study how sleep habits in adolescents contribute to type 2 diabetes risk. Since 2008, the ITM has awarded nearly $ 5.7 million in pilot awards, including eight to investigators from the department of Pediatrics. Thirty‐four of the 114 investigators who received pilot awards from 2008 to 2014 were able to secure additional grants from external organizations, totaling over $53 million in direct cost funding. 1
Chicago Pediatrics Monthly
January 2015
The ITM has several categories of pilot awards, including one that grants up to $25,000 per collaborating institution to researchers who partner with scientists at ITM affiliates—NorthShore University HealthSystem, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Rush University Medical Center—to increase the potential for new discoveries. Once researchers are ready to apply for a major extramural grant, the ITM’s R Studio can help them write a strong, competitive proposal with feedback from senior faculty in the same field. “You can come in with an amorphous idea and we’ll help you turn it into a tightly knit grant proposal with a strong set of aims that is more likely to get funded,” says Ross. “I’m writing a grant that is somewhat outside my area of expertise and I plan to use the R Studio’s services.” Junior faculty members are eligible to apply for the ITM’s KL2 Career Scholar Awards, which provides two years of substantial salary support to help scholars become independent researchers. Tara Henderson was funded to study physician preferences and knowledge gaps in the care of childhood cancer survivors, and subsequently received a five‐year K‐award from the NCI to continue her study on issues pertaining to pediatric cancer survivors. The ITM also offers a 10‐week grant‐writing program three times a year to help junior faculty generate competitive NIH individual K‐award applications. To help researchers pay for UChicago laboratory services needed to conduct their studies, the ITM offers Core Subsidy Mini‐Awards of up to $5,000. Since 2008, the ITM has made 151 such awards for a total of more than $1,337,000. The ITM also offers subsidized research support and resources to investigators. Researchers conducting clinical trials can apply to use the combined adult and pediatric Clinical Resource Center (CRC), where full‐time staff nurses monitor subjects around the clock and a research nutritionist designs meals for participants according to each study’s protocol. Nephrologist Anna Zisman conducted a clinical study at the CRC to study racial differences in the physiology of chronic kidney disease, which involved feeding participants meals customized to different nutritional levels and nurses collecting urine and blood samples from participants every 20 minutes for three hours to analyze the food’s effect on kidney function. For one pediatric research project, the CRC provided a research subject advocate who met with each potential participant to obtain the proper consent required by a national IRB, allowing the research to move forward. Other services include free biostatistical and biomedical research ethics consulting. Ross, an ethicist, frequently advises investigators doing genetics research to obtain a certificate of confidentiality from the NIH so they can offer study participants an ironclad guarantee that their genetic information is protected, even from subpoenas from the federal government. Investigators can also discuss study design and data analysis with a biostatistician, and receive ongoing biostatistical support during their studies. “Using these services shows that your institution is supporting your research project, which funding organizations look favorably upon,” says Ross. “Also, your grant proposal is more competitive because you have a less expensive process with ITM providing support and services.” 2
Chicago Pediatrics Monthly
January 2015
Collaboration is another important element of speeding up clinical discoveries. The ITM facilitates collaboration with a research networking tool called Profiles (http://profiles.bsd.uchicago.edu), which makes it easy to find—and be found by‐‐potential collaborators. Another ITM program helps investigators partner with community‐based organizations serving vulnerable populations on the South Side of Chicago who might otherwise be excluded from research, thereby improving the community’s health faster. Transforming fundamental research into clinical practice requires enthusiastic scientists trained in clinical or translational research, says Ross. One goal of the ITM is to educate and mentor young investigators. The Essentials of Patient Oriented Research (EPOR) course, for example, covers study design, ethics, and statistical methods during free weekly lectures over three quarters and is geared primarily for fellows, trainees, and junior faculty. Another course, Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR), delves into topics such as conflicts of interest, ethical treatment of animals in research, and intellectual property. RCR is mandatory for faculty and fellows who have support from a training grant funded by both the NSF and the NIH. “As pediatricians with the goal to improve the health of children in our neighborhood and in the wider community, we all need to be doing more research,” says Ross. “The ITM is not only handing us opportunities to carry out our research ideas, but expedites our work so that we can offer today’s children better treatments and care.” For more information about the ITM, visit http://itm.uchicago.edu
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