The UAMS Research Expo on Aug. 25 drew 184 registrants for the virtual event with 25 research service providers presenting via Zoom.

Sponsored by the UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI), the event included overviews of up to five minutes from representatives of the research services. Attendees were able to drop into the event to hear scheduled presentations and ask questions via the written comments feature in Zoom. UAMS T-shirts were given away as door prizes, and Yuet-Kin “Ricky” Leung, Ph.D., won the Grand Door Prize, a manuscript submission fee to be paid by TRI.

Attendees expressed their appreciation anonymously in TRI’s feedback survey. “The brief presentations provided a snapshot of many of the resources available at UAMS, several of which I learned about for the first time,” one attendee said.

The UAMS research resources and services presentations: Translational Research Institute (TRI); Office of Research & Sponsored Programs; Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC); Office of Research Regulatory Affairs; Division of Laboratory Animal Medicine (DLAM): Office of Research Compliance; TRI Mock Study Section; ARresearch.org Participant Registry; Institute for Digital Health and Innovation (IDHI); TRI Community Engagement; TRI TL1/ Translational Workforce Development; TRI Research Budget Development; TRI KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award Program; TRI Pilot Award Program; UAMS Research Pharmacy; TRI Comprehensive Informatics Resource Center; Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute; BioVentures; Institutional Review Board (IRB); TRI Research Regulatory Support; Clinical Trials Innovation Unit (CTIU); Center for High Performance Computing; Implementation Science; Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC); Arkansas Children’s Research Institute.

In this month’s TRIbune, we catch up with one of our KL2 Program graduates, Keneshia Bryant-Moore, Ph.D., APRN, FNP-BC, whose network of faith leaders is providing crucial information about COVID-19 to Arkansas populations most vulnerable to the disease.

Bryant-Moore built the network using community engagement principles that have led to multiple awards from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). She recently received a $150,000 COVID-19-focused enhancement of an existing PCORI grant.

This issue also gives you the scoop on the upcoming seminar series – TRI innOVATION, and the first UAMS TRI Regulatory Compliance Conference, which will include a keynote address by Quincy Byrdsong, Ed.D., an award-winning author and sought-after speaker.

Our Study of the Month features Tina Ipe, M.D., M.P.H.

COVID-19-related restrictions have prevented industry sponsors of clinical trials from inspecting UAMS research facilities in person. In response, TRI recently produced a video tour.

The video includes TRI research facilities at the Institute on Aging Building, the Research Pharmacy in the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, and a laboratory in the Biomedical II Building. While the video was prompted by distant industry sponsors, it is also available to investigators and other clinical research organizations on the UAMS YouTube channel:  https://youtu.be/fep1ZsEO7J0

UAMS researcher Taren Swindle, Ph.D., whose work is supported by the National Institutes of Health, says a TRI Mock Study Section five years ago was critical to her early funding success. This year, Swindle received a rare perfect score on an application that garnered a two-year, $403,550 NIH award.

As she explains in this video, TRI’s Mock Study Section is a great resource for UAMS researchers.

More information is available on the TRI website. If you have questions, please contact Sandra Hatley, HatleySandraE@uams.edu or (501) 686-5417.

Applications Invited for Implementation Science Scholar Awards 

The UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) and the Center for Implementation Research are inviting applications for the second class of Implementation Science Scholars.

The two-year program will support clinical faculty in learning and applying the principles and methods of implementation science—the study of how best to promote systematic uptake of research findings and other evidence-based practices into routine care. The program provides 20% salary support and prepares faculty to publish the results of their implementation science projects. Eligible applicants include UAMS clinical faculty with a professional degree (M.D., Ph.D., Pharm.D., D.N.P., Dr.PH., D.O., etc.).

The program is led by Geoffrey Curran, Ph.D., director of the UAMS Center for Implementation Research and supported by TRI and its Clinical and Translational Science Award.

Using the principles of implementation science, Curran and colleagues will guide faculty through 10 didactic sessions per year and provide oversight and mentoring for experiential implementation science projects. Scholars who want to pursue research grants to expand on their accomplishments would receive assistance from the UAMS Center for Implementation Research.

The program is open to all full-time UAMS faculty, including at Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

Other important dates:

• Oct. 19, 2020: Applications due (Email to clmosley@uams.edu)
• Nov. 30, 2020: Awardees notified (estimated)
• Jan. 6, 2021: Classwork begins (estimated)

Additional information and the RFA are available on the TRI website.

Contact: Cindy Mosley, CLMosley@uams.edu

LITTLE ROCK — A national database for patient cancer images at UAMS will become the storage site for COVID-19 clinical images from across the United States and around the globe, including chest x-rays and CT scans of the body.

This week, UAMS also became the first research institution to contribute de-identified images of COVID-19 to the storage site, called The Cancer Imaging Archive. The archive is funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The archive is led by UAMS’ Fred Prior, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the College of Medicine.

With Arkansas data being the first to arrive, it will be a unique opportunity for researchers across the U.S. to see how COVID-19 is affecting a rural population.

“Researchers are clamoring for this data,” Prior said. “At UAMS, we want to make sure the unique characteristics of our rural population in Arkansas are represented. Our state’s inclusion is really important as scientists are trying to figure out how this disease is evolving, how it’s impacting different groups of people, and why there are such a wide variety of symptoms and outcomes.”

The majority of the COVID-19 images are chest X-rays, the most commonly used imaging procedure for COVID-19 in the U.S., Prior said. About 20% of UAMS cases also have CT scans, allowing more detailed analyses. In addition, many of the CT scans included the chest, abdomen and pelvis.

“We’re looking at internal organs other than just the lungs, which is important because more and more we’re seeing this disease impacting the kidneys and the liver,” Prior said.

The first batch of published de-identified images comes from 105 UAMS COVID-19 patients and includes a representative sample of the viral genomes found in the patients.  The collection and publication of the data was funded by the UAMS Translational Research Institute, which is supported by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, grant UL1TR003107.

The data is publicly available on the archive website: https://www.cancerimagingarchive.net/collections/

“Making this de-identified image and genetic data available nationally is an important step as we work to better understand a disease that’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” said Laura James, M.D., director of the Translational Research Institute. “UAMS is helping to lead the way, and we expect there will soon be thousands more patients represented in the imaging database from across the country.”

In addition, she noted, her institute’s Comprehensive Informatics Resource Center, which Prior leads, is helping the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) build a large central repository for COVID-19 research. That storehouse of data will be cross-linked with the imaging archive.

The 62 NCATS-funded Clinical and Translational Science Award  institutions, such as UAMS, have been invited to share their COVID-19 data in the repository, called the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C).

Prior and Ahmad Baghal, M.D., director of the UAMS Arkansas Clinical Data Repository, will pilot test the N3C’s mechanism for linking with UAMS clinical data in the repository and data from The Cancer Imaging Archive.

“We are uniquely positioned to help lead these national efforts,” said Prior, who serves on the NCATS Governance Working Group and Tools Working Group. “The Cancer Imaging Archive was shovel-ready for this sort of project, and UAMS is fortunate to have superb data infrastructure thanks to the support of our UAMS and Translational Research Institute leadership.”