We are thrilled to announce the release of the 2023 UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) Annual Report! This 52-page magazine-style publication is a testament to the dedication and talent of UAMS-affiliated faculty and staff, showcasing noteworthy advances in translational science.

The TRI Annual Report serves as a window into our world, capturing the essence of our work and highlighting the translational research successes that have unfolded over the past year. This report brings to life the research advances achieved by many of you and your talented UAMS-affiliated colleagues. 

While it was challenging to condense all of the success stories into a single publication, we are proud of the diverse range of projects and advancements featured within its pages. We applaud everyone who played a role in making these achievements possible.

We hope that you find this report as inspiring and enlightening as we do. Read the 2023 TRI Annual Report. 

In this issue of The TRIbune, we feature the successful opioid prescribing reduction efforts of Kyle Kalkwarf, M.D., a TRI Implementation Science Scholars Program participant.

The story highlights the potential for implementation science to improve medical practices. Kalkwarf’s work produced a 20% reduction in opioid use for surgery patients on a ventilator.

Our Study of the Month features Larry Johnson, M.D., and TRI’s Faryal Jalbani, M.D., MSPH, and Monica Smith, B.A.

We also highlight our six new KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Scholar Award recipients and the 2023 Summer Writing Challenge! 

Read The TRIbune.

The UAMS Translational Research Institute has named three UAMS researchers who will receive pilot study grants of up to $25,000 each.

The one-year awards went to projects led by researchers in the College of Medicine and College of Nursing. The awardees and their project titles are: 

Jonathan Bona, Ph.D., assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Biomedical Informatics

“Accelerating Insights with an Open Drug Information Toolkit (ADROIT),” which will create and evaluate a novel software tool designed to provide non-informaticists with easy access to drug information.

Laura Hays, Ph.D., APRN, assistant professor, College of Nursing Department of Nursing Practice

“Arkansas – Making History,” which will address the lack of genetic risk assessment services among rural Arkansas providers.  

Mario Schootman, Ph.D., vice chair and professor, College of Medicine Department of Medicine; co-director, TRI Workforce Development Program “Assessing the Quality of the Linked Arkansas Cancer Registry and Arkansas All-Payer Claims Database Data,” which aims to generate preliminary data for an NIH R01 application focused on identifying reasons for elevated mortality in colorectal cancer patients in persistent poverty areas.

Nikolas Berardi, MHA, a program manager for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Translational Research Institute (TRI), credits the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health Master of Health Administration program for helping to change his life.

That includes putting him in position to work for TRI.

“The college and my directors in the MHA program cared about me. They helped me find a job,” Berardi said. “They were always reaching out seeing how they could help me.

“Every professor, every administrator made me feel like family.”

Berardi first entered the MHA program in 2019. During his time in the program, he developed a strong rapport with his classmates and instructors.

The bond he developed with individuals connected to the curriculum, along with being adamant about getting his degree and providing support services to population bases, provided Berardi with the boost he needed to ultimately attain his MHA degree.

Berardi’s path to the college began in his hometown of Prescott, Arizona, which is an hour away from Phoenix. As a young adult, Berardi moved to central Arkansas and enrolled in Hendrix College, where he earned a bachelor’s in biology.

Afterward, he initially pursued a nursing degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. However, he soon realized that nursing was not his calling.

Still steadfast about making a difference in society, Berardi became a member of Volunteers in Medicine, a nonprofit that helps provide medical care to people from low-income households. While volunteering with the organization, Berardi received an intriguing suggestion.

“One day there was a major shortage of volunteers, and I was working nonstop to help keep everything going,” he said. “A supervisor suddenly suggested that I get a master’s degree in health care administration. I did some research and opted to apply for the UAMS’ MHA program. Eventually, I earned the MHA degree in 2022.”

When Berardi reflects on what he was able to do, and how it’s connected to his desire to address health care challenges across populations — he becomes even more grateful that he chose to attend the College of Public Health. He deems it as a life-changing experience.

“It hit me a couple days after graduating with the MHA of what I had accomplished,” Berardi admitted. “Looking back, I thought about how the professors were so welcoming. They made it feel like home.

“That inspires me even more to advocate for and help people in need. I’m always willing to speak with people and let them know that they too can achieve any of their aspirations.”

In a new study led by UAMS’ Laura Gressler, Ph.D., researchers presented a novel model to help research funding agencies and groups prioritize their funding for various health conditions.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Health Forum and included co-authors from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“It’s really exciting,” said Gressler, whose current work is supported by the UAMS Translational Research Institute. “This is the culmination of more than three years of very hard work with many collaborators and stakeholders, and I hope that a model like this can be used in the future to help inform funding decisions.”

For Gressler, an assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy Division of Pharmaceutical Evaluation and Policy, it was her second JAMA publication as first author and third as a co-author.

The team’s paper, “Data-Driven Model Identifies Gaps in Biomedical Innovation: A Proof-of-Concept Study,” ranks 13 common health conditions based on each condition’s health care burden, cost and biomedical product innovation.

Typically, Gressler said, federal agencies, industry leaders and stakeholders who fund research will consider only one aspect of the condition such as public health burden or cost alone when determining how to prioritize research funding support.

“We argue that it should be a multipronged approach and demonstrate our proposed approach. That’s what’s novel about this, and from those three factors we are finding that balance,” she said.

The 13 disease areas, ranked in order of priority, are:

1. Diabetes mellitus
2. Osteoarthritis
3. Drug use disorders
4. Ischemic heart disease
5. Alzheimer disease and other dementias
6. Chronic kidney disease
7. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
8. Cirrhosis and other liver disease
9. Colorectal cancer
10. Stroke
11. Depressive disorders
12. Tracheal, bronchus, and lung cancer
13. Lower respiratory infections

“My work on this JAMA publication reinforced my research interests by highlighting the existing gaps in available data and methodologies needed to inform decision-making so that limited resources can be directed to the most important and/or most neglected aspects of health care,” Gressler said.

Gressler receives research funding support through the Translational Research Institute Data Scholars Program and Team Science Voucher Program. She has also participated in the institute’s Path 2 K program which aided her recent submission of an early-career development (K) award application with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

As a Translational Research Institute data scholar, she is using natural language processing to identify and assess hip arthroplasty devices. As part of her proposed K award, she will use natural language processing and other machine learning methods to augment existing datasets for the evaluation of medical devices. As a co-investigator on the team science voucher study, she is evaluating the role of medical marijuana policies and available treatment options among patients with chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.

The Translational Research Institute is funded by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Clinical and Translational Science Award UL1 TR003107.

Six early-career researchers have been selected to receive two years of funded translational research training and support in the UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Scholar Awards Program.

The promising junior faculty researchers were selected for the 2023-2024 program through a competitive application process. KL2 scholars receive two years of mentored translational research training, 75% salary support and up to $25,000 a year for research, tuition, travel and education.

Funding for the program comes from TRI, supported by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Clinical and Translational Science Award KL2 TR003108; UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute and Arkansas Children’s Research Institute. 

The scholars, their project titles and primary mentors are:

• Mary “Katy” Allison, Ph.D., MPH, research assistant professor, Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health Department of Health Behavior & Health Education
  “Optimized Implementation Strategies to Support Pregnancy-Related Remote Patient Monitoring”
  
  Primary Mentor: Geoffrey Curran, Ph.D.
  
• Michail Mavros, M.D., assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Surgery (Oncology)
  “Venous Thromboembolism in Pancreatic Cancer Patients Undergoing Pancreatectomy: Risk Factors and Effectiveness of Pharmacoprophylaxis”
  
  Primary Mentor: Mario Schootman, Ph.D.
  
• Brian D. Piccolo, Ph.D., assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics
  “Mechanisms by Which Culturally Specific Foods Influence Infant Gut Development and Barrier Function”
  
  Primary Mentor: Mario Ferruzzi, Ph.D.
  
• Megha Sharma, M.D., assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology
  “Beyond Race: Objectively Assessed Skin Color and its Association with Pulse Oximeter Bias in Critically Ill Infants”
  
  Primary Mentor: Mario Schootman, Ph.D.
  
• Ankita Shukla, M.D., assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology
  “PERFORM: Persistent Effects of Intrauterine Growth Restriction on Infant Brain Development: A Comparative MEG Study”
  
  Primary Mentor: Hari Eswaran, Ph.D.
  
• Alicja Urbaniak, Ph.D., instructor, College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biolog
  “Monensin and its Derivatives as Adjuvants to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors for the Treatment of Metastatic Breast Cancer”
  
  Primary Mentor: Alan Tackett, Ph.D.

Only two years ago, the idea of commercializing their future research discoveries was a novel concept for Julia Tobacyk, Ph.D., and Megan Reed, Ph.D. Today they can say they created a startup company as postdoctoral fellows in the Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HSIE) training program, which is the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Research Service Award training core of the Translational Research Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).

The HSIE program is unlike traditional academic postdoctoral education — the goal is to transform scientists to think like entrepreneurs and channel their research discoveries into commercial ventures to bring new health care products to patients.

Tobacyk and Reed are in their second year of the HSIE training program, and it is intensive. In addition to mentored laboratory research, HSIE postdocs take business classes in the Graduate Entrepreneurship Program in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. They attend mentoring workshops from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, form teams to develop a business plan for a health science discovery with classmates from diverse ethnic and academic backgrounds, and compete in pitch competitions.

“At first, the fast-paced environment is a culture shock for most HSIE postdocs, but we all quickly adapt and develop our inner entrepreneurial spirit,” Tobacyk said.

Tobacyk’s research in the laboratory focuses on developing treatment strategies for opioid use disorder in pregnant women without negatively affecting their babies. Alarming statistics reveal that a baby is born physically dependent on opioids every 15 minutes in the United States. The gold standard treatment for opioid-dependent pregnant mothers is buprenorphine (BUP). Although BUP treatment may prevent pregnant mothers from relapsing, it also contributes to withdrawal in their babies, also known as neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS).

Tobacyk, along with her research mentor, Lisa Brents, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, filed a provisional patent application with co-workers in September 2022 to protect their invention of a deuterated form of BUP (BUP-D2). Applying precision deuteration is thought to alter the metabolism of BUP to minimize formation of the harmful metabolite that contributes to NOWS.

In January 2023, Tobacyk and Reed formed a company called Pediatrica Therapeutics, LLC, a pharmaceutical startup company dedicated to bringing BUP-D2 through the drug development pipeline. In recent months, the startup team has won or placed in a number of business plan competitions across the U.S. and in Canada. In April, they won first place in the Arkansas Governor’s Cup Collegiate Business Plan Competition, which came with a $20,000 prize. 

Their team finished second with a $10,000 prize in the graduate business plan competition at the 2023 Stu Clark New Venture Championships in Winnipeg, Canada. They also took third place ($750) for their elevator pitch at that competition. The team was a finalist ($1,500) in the Baylor New Venture Competition as well as finalists in the UA Heartland Challenge and the international Rice Business Plan Competition ($1,500).  

The graduate entrepreneurship students and founding business partners of Pediatrica Therapeutics, LLC, are:

• Megan Reed, Ph.D., chief executive officer, who has experience in biochemistry, drug development and patenting of pharmaceutical compounds; she is a HSIE postdoctoral fellow in the College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
• Julia Tobacyk, Ph.D., chief scientific officer, who co-invented BUP-D2 and performed preclinical studies; she is a HSIE postdoctoral fellow in the College of Medicine Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.
• Hayot Tuychiev, BA, chief marketing officer, who is a two-time Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and manages scientific and public communications for the company.
• Veronica Garcia, BA, chief operating officer, who is the former director of Community Engagement and Inclusion at the Springdale, Arkansas, Chamber of Commerce and has assisted 75 entrepreneurs to form businesses.

In addition to their business classes and founding their new company, Tobacyk and Reed continue to work in the laboratory, publish papers and develop their careers as translational scientists. However, the HSIE training program has empowered them to look at their research through a new, entrepreneurial lens.

With the team members concluding their final year of HSIE training in June, Reed, Tuychiev and Garcia are moving on to pursue other career goals.

“Julia and I both agree that academic research holds plenty of unexploited potential to leverage discoveries to improve health care,” Reed said. “Pediatrica Therapeutics will not be our last venture.”

Tobacyk and Brents hope to advance the company’s goals with a Small Business Innovation Research program award, which they will apply for this year as co-principal investigators.

Reed and Tobacyk are supported by the UAMS Translational Research Institute through the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Clinical and Translational Science Award grants UL1 TR003107 and TL1 TR003109. Brents is a graduate of the Translational Research Institute’s KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Scholar Awards Program, also supported through NCATS.

This article was based on a first-person account by Julia Tobacyk, Ph.D.

Christi Madden, MPA, has joined the UAMS Translational Research Institute as its executive director.

Madden, a leader with more than two decades of research programmatic management experience, spent most of her career in her home state of Oklahoma at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC), where she worked in the Department of Pediatrics and at the Oklahoma Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

As executive director, Madden oversees all Translational Research Institute staff and services to UAMS researchers. She also serves as a liaison to the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds the UAMS Translational Research Institute with a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA).

“We are thrilled to have Christi on our team,” said institute Director Laura James, M.D. “In her roles at OUHSC, she managed several highly impactful public health research and quality improvement programs. Her skillset and research leadership experience will help our institute provide the highest quality service to our researchers and to our research participants.”

Madden’s management experience includes the IDeA States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network, the Oklahoma Primary Healthcare Improvement Cooperative, the Oklahoma Child Health Research Network and the Healthy Hearts for Oklahoma project.

She has also worked on several projects with rural communities across Oklahoma to implement community-driven initiatives to improve cardiovascular health, increase access to health care and mental health resources, and implement COVID-19-related research.

In 2022, she was recognized by the Public Health Institute of Oklahoma as one of the County Health Improvement Organization’s Top Ten People of the Decade.

“I am excited to be in this new role at TRI and look forward to working collaboratively across UAMS and with our partners such as Arkansas Children’s Research Institute and the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System to improve the health and health care of Arkansans.” 

The Translational Research Institute is supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, Clinical and Translational Science Award TR003107.

In this month’s TRIbune newsletter, we feature our second annual TRI Research Day, which drew about 150 people from the UAMS research community, including Arkansas Children’s and the Central Arkansas Veteran’s Healthcare System.

Eight of our TRI-supported researchers gave oral presentations, and there were 33 poster presentations. Our keynote speaker was the University of Florida’s Duane A. Mitchell, M.D., Ph.D., a pioneer in the research of brain tumor immunotherapies.

The TRI Study of the Month features Clare Nesmith, M.D., the UAMS principal investigator on a national study comparing rapid and slow weaning methods for newborns with neonatal opioid withdrawal symptoms (NOWS). Read The TRIbune.