TRI’s Inaugural Research Day 2022 on Tuesday drew 125 attendees and included a poster session with 33 poster presenters.

Held at Heifer International Headquarters in Little Rock, the full-day program included two keynote speakers and six presentations from researchers whose work has been supported by TRI.

The posters represented TRI-funded programs including pilot awards, Health Science Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Awards, NCATS Supplemental Awards, KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Awards, Implementation Science Scholar Awards, Data Science Scholar Awards, Team Science Voucher Awards, and the Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program in the Department of Biomedical Informatics.

The poster winners are:

Overall Visual:
Cody Ashby, Ph.D., M.S., Assistant Professor, College of Medicine Department of Biomedical Informatics (Pilot)
Racial Differences in Multiple Myeloma Genomics and Outcome in Rural Populations

Overall Content:
Yasir Rahmatallah, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, College of Medicine Department of Biomedical Informatics (Data Science)
Disease Trajectory Analysis From Electronic Health Record

Overall Oral/Discussion:
Melissa Zielinski, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry (Pilot)
Incarcerated Pregnant Women in Arkansas: Expanding Foundational Knowledge and Building Research Capacity

Overall Impact:
Isabelle Racine Miousse, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (KL2)
Dietary Methionine Restriction Improves the Response to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors

People’s Choice:
Nishank Jain, M.D., Assistant Professor, College of Medicine Department of Internal Medicine (Data Science) (with assistance from Layth Al-Hindi, medical student)
Event Rates and Risk Factors for Intracranial Bleeds Among Dialysis Patients on P2Y12 Inhibitors

The posters were judged by a who’s who of UAMS research leaders, including College of Medicine Dean Susan Smyth, M.D., Ph.D. Other judges were: Paul Drew, Ph.D., Laura Dunn, M.D., (new chair of the Department of Psychiatry) Bradley Martin, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Richard Owen, M.D., and Jessica Snowden, M.D.

View all of the poster entries in the Research Day Program.

Principal Investigator: Vivian Shi, M.D., Associate Professor, Department of Dermatology, College of Medicine.

Summary: A five-year longitudinal observational study tracking outcomes of patients with chronic inflammatory skin conditions, including atopic dermatitis (eczema), alopecia, hidradenitis suppurativa, vitiligo and psoriasis.

Significance: Characterization of disease activity over time, including response to treatments and analysis of biospecimens, will inform clinical practice by identifying the occurrence and impact of comorbid medical conditions and aid the design of more targeted therapies.

TRI Services: Budget development, Medicare coverage analysis, regulatory and research nurse coordinator services.

Sponsor: TARGET PharmaSolutions

In this issue of The TRIbune newsletter, we highlight the work of two researchers who used TRI’s Team Science Voucher Program to help obtain large federal grants. Craig Porter, Ph.D., received a five-year, $2 million award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Corey Hayes, Pharm.D., Ph.D., MPH, leverage his team science voucher to earn a $1 million Veterans Affairs Career Development Award.

This issue also features Vivian Shi, M.D., in our TRI Study of the Month and the mentorship awards to implementation scientists Geoffrey Curran, Ph.D., Taren Swindle, Ph.D., and Melissa Zielinski, Ph.D. They took three of the six UAMS mentorship awards announced at Mentors Appreciation Day in January.  Read The TRIbune.

Principal Investigator: Subodh Devabhaktuni, M.D., Assistant Professor, Division of Cardiology, Department of Internal Medicine, College of Medicine.

Summary: A phase 3 multi-center efficacy and safety study of Etripamil Nasal Spray to treat spontaneous episodes of Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia (PSVT), an arrhythmia.

Significance: While not lethal, PSVT episodes can cause panic that sends patients to the emergency department. If approved by the FDA, Etripamil Nasal Spray could be used in the home to stabilize patients’ heart rhythms.    

TRI Services: Budget development and negotiation, Medicare coverage analysis, and regulatory management

Sponsor: Milestone Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Our latest TRIbune newsletter highlights a milestone for TRI’s Implementation Science Scholars Program. The program, led by Geoffrey Curran, Ph.D., graduated its first cohort of five scholars. All impressed the program’s external evaluator and program leaders with strong project reports, which we have summarized.  

Our Study of the Month features Subodh Devabhaktuni, M.D.Read The TRIbune.

The UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) is pleased to invite Letters of Intent (LOI) for the 2022 KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Scholar Awards.

KL2 Scholar Awards are part of the TRI Career Development Scholars Program, which provides support for early-career UAMS faculty with a professional degree (M.D., Ph.D., Pharm.D., D.N.P., Dr.PH., D.O., etc.) who are committed to an academic career in multidisciplinary clinical or translational research.

Successful applicants will begin the two-year program July 1, 2022. The KL2 program combines an innovative educational program with mentored clinical/translational science research. KL2 Scholars receive:

• Salary support/stipend of up to $95,000 (including fringe) per year. 
• Up to $25,000 of non-salary support per year, which can be used for research, tuition, travel expenses, educational materials and other costs related to the scholar’s research.

The deadline for submitting LOIs is Jan. 24, 2022, 5 p.m. (CT). 

See attached LOI Cover Page PDF. 

The KL2 program is supported by the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program of the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. 

TRI is inviting applications from community-based organizations to participate in a six-month research leadership training program and receive up to $2,500 in seed funding to implement a real-world project.

Led by the TRI Community Engagement team, the 2022 Community Partners Educated as Arkansas Research Leaders (CPEARL) Program will include up to six teams. Each team will also have a UAMS researcher and community mentor assigned to mentor them throughout the year.

An information session will be held Jan. 19, noon – 1 p.m.

View flyer for additional details. 

Visit the CPEARL webpage. 

Please share with your community partners and others. This is a great opportunity for community-based organizations to improve their partnership readiness. 

Contact: Rachel Hale, rbhale@uams.edu

TRI is now seeking applicants for a new Team Science Champion Award that will support early stage, cross-disciplinary collaborations.

One-year grants of up to $75,000 will be awarded to up to two cross-disciplinary teams. The funded research will involve telemedicine, digital health or other innovative technologies, and it will address rural health. Proposed projects will involve a collaboration with a rural provider, such as the UAMS Rural Research Network or similar located outside of the UAMS Little Rock campus catchment area.

TRI is particularly interested in projects that forge new collaborations across multiple disciplines that directly support its mission to develop new knowledge and novel approaches that will measurably address the complex health challenges of Arkansas’ rural and underrepresented populations. 

Team Science Champion Award information sessions will be offered on 12/16/21, 01/06/22, and 01/27/22. Please email Adam Kleinerman (akleinerman@uams.edu) or Paul Duguid (pduguid@uams.edu) if you would like to attend one of these sessions. 

Letters of Intent are due Feb. 7, 2022.  Submit your letter here.

All applications must be received no later than March 14, 2022.

Read the Request for Applications for details.