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.

An American Cancer Society grant will support UAMS study of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) influence on racial disparities in the use of a common, life-saving treatment for Arkansas breast cancer patients.

The two-year, $222,000 grant is led by Chenghui Li, Ph.D., an associate professor in the College of Pharmacy Division of Pharmaceutical Evaluation and Policy, and an associate member of the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute Cancer Prevention and Population Services Program. The new study builds on her work previously funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).

Arkansas is disproportionately affected by breast cancer, especially among Black women. According to Kaiser Family Foundation 2020 estimates, breast cancer mortality rate among Black women in Arkansas is 42% higher than the national average (27.2 per versus 19.1 per 100,000 women). Arkansas’ breast cancer mortality rate for white women is 19.4%. 

About 80% of breast cancer patients have estrogen receptor positive tumors, which can be treated with endocrine therapy. The therapy slows or stops tumor growth by blocking estrogen production/binding onto breast cancer cells, reducing the five-year recurrence of breast cancer by 40% and mortality by 33%.

“Findings from this study can provide crucial insights into how the Affordable Care Act may have impacted racial disparities in getting this life-saving treatment for breast cancer,” Li said. “Our findings will have important implications for similar states in the South that have not expanded Medicaid.”

“Dr. Li continues to invest her time and expertise into research that is aligned with the vision of UAMS and will positively impact patients,” said Jacob T Painter, Pharm.D., Ph.D., MBA, associate professor and director of the Division of Pharmaceutical Evaluation and Policy in the College of Pharmacy. “The American Cancer Society grant will enable Dr. Li to further her research of racial disparities in breast cancer treatment, and we expect her findings will reverberate beyond Arkansas.”

The ACA took effect in Arkansas in January 2014, resulting in a decrease of uninsured adults from 23% to 10%. Today it provides health insurance coverage to about 300,000 Arkansans.

While the ACA may have helped reduce racial disparities in the use of endocrine therapy, Li said, the ongoing poor health outcomes for Black breast cancer patients raise questions about other barriers to treatment that she will explore in her research.

Li said her study appears to be the first to assess the ACA’s impact on racial disparities in the use of endocrine therapy and cost sharing — how much breast cancer patients must pay out of pocket.

The study uses a unique data source: the linked Arkansas All-Payer Claims Database and Arkansas Cancer Registry, which combines claims data from all payers in Arkansas with the Cancer Registry.

“With this linked data, we will have access to detailed tumor characteristics that are lacking in claims databases with the benefit of detailed prescription information across both public and private insurers,” Li said. “This presents a unique opportunity for us to systematically examine the impact of the ACA on racial disparity in endocrine therapy use.”

Li’s research is supported by the UAMS Translational Research Institute, which is funded by NCATS at the National Institutes of Health, Clinical and Translational Science Award UL1 TR003107.

A $221,000 supplemental award from NCATS in 2020 enabled Li to provide preliminary findings that supported her American Cancer Society grant application. The NCATS grant is supporting an ongoing analysis of racial disparities in endocrine therapy use among early-stage estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer patients in relation to cancer recurrence and mortality.

The NCATS-funded study also involves interviewing providers and Black and white breast cancer patients who discontinued endocrine therapy within five years to better understand barriers of endocrine therapy adherence, and their perspectives on any racial disparities. The work received assistance from the Translational Research Institute’s Community Engagement Program.

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.

LITTLE ROCK — Laura James, M.D., director of the UAMS Translational Research Institute, has been elected to a second term on the national Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) Board of Directors.

She joins 13 other directors at large from National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program institutions across the United States. She was first elected to the board in 2020.

James has been director of the Translational Research Institute since 2014 and is UAMS associate vice chancellor for Clinical and Translational Research. She has a 28-year history of translational research in clinical pharmacology and toxicology at UAMS and Arkansas Children’s Hospital. As a clinician-scientist and founder of the startup company Acetaminophen Toxicity Diagnostics LLC, she is leading development of a rapid diagnostic test for acetaminophen liver injury. In 2014 she was named an inaugural fellow of the Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA).

The role of the ACTS board is to govern, establish policy and make strategic decisions about the future of the organization. ACTS supports research that continually improves team science, integrating multiple disciplines across the translational science spectrum. It is also the academic home for translational research education and career development, and is an advocate for translational science.

“It has been a pleasure over the last three years working with the ACTS board and staff to create new programs and maximize investments that support the professional development of translational researchers,” James said. “I am excited to continue this work building productive collaborations across the association and with other relevant organizations.”

Translational research is the process of taking findings and discoveries (new medicines, health interventions, etc.) and “translating” or applying them to everyday practices that improve health.

The CTSA Program is administered by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the NIH. TRI received a five-year, $24.2 million CTSA, grant UL1 TR003107 in July 2019 and is one of more than 60 CTSA-supported institutions nationally.

Come see how we’re translating research into health practice at TRI Research Day 2023 on Tuesday, April 4, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Heifer International headquarters in Little Rock.

Our keynote speaker (11:10 a.m. – noon) is Duane Mitchell, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neurosurgery and director of the University of Florida Clinical Translational Science Institute (CTSI). He is also assistant vice president for research and associate dean for Clinical and Translational Sciences at the UF College of Medicine.

The event will showcase TRI-supported researchers with oral presentations from TRI’s KL2 Mentored Research Career Development scholars, Implementation Science scholars, TL1 Health Science Innovation and Entrepreneurship trainees, and Pilot Award Program awardees.

A poster session, awards and networking are from 2:50 – 4 p.m., and will include the full array of TRI-supported projects across its funding and training programs.

Register here.

Contact: Chaz England, CEngland@uams.edu