You’ll want to check out the September TRIbune, which features UAMS Profiles, the exciting new platform for finding collaborators. This issue also highlights a TRI-supported stroke researcher who received a Genentech grant, as well as TRI-cited publications by your colleagues.
UAMS’ Vladimir Zharov, Ph.D., is a “translational” researcher. His internationally recognized nanomedicine research has led to new, exciting possibilities for early diagnosis of cancer, infections and stroke, as well as prospects for commercialization of in vivo noninvasive blood testing.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is looking for more Zharovs in the biomedical research field, and UAMS, through its NIH-funded Translational Research Institute (TRI), is working to oblige.
UAMS has more than 500,000 square feet dedicated to understanding life at organ, cell and gene levels. This important “basic science” has long been the foundation of biomedical innovation and discovery. Even so, attention has turned in the last decade to expediting the translation of laboratory discoveries to improved diagnosis and treatment of patients.
Citing NIH statistics, Laura James, M.D., director of the UAMS Translational Research Institute, noted that new drugs, devices and other interventions take an average of 14 years to bring to market, cost as much as $2 billion, and experience a 95 percent failure rate.
“The process can be extremely onerous, because researchers must contend with numerous regulatory hurdles, design feasible yet rigorous clinical studies, find people who are willing and eligible to participate in the research, and compete for a shrinking supply of taxpayer dollars dedicated to research,” James said.
In 2006, the NIH offered competitive awards to research institutions with the best ideas for overcoming the time and cost barriers and improving the success rate of translational research. The effort is funded through the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA).
The purpose of our efforts is to improve the health and health care of Arkansans.UAMS received a CTSA in 2009. The $19.9 million award, along with significant institutional funds, supports the UAMS Translational Research Institute, which was established in 2011.
The translational research at a CTSA goes beyond extending basic science discoveries into clinical settings; it also requires critical involvement of community members and clinicians at every stage of research, from the researcher’s idea to the implementation of results into the community. It also includes studying how research findings are being implemented to determine the best methods that will produce sustained changes in the practice of medicine and in human health.
The Translational Research Institute uses a number of approaches to make translational research more efficient and improve researcher success. These include better use of technology and available patient data such as the electronic health record; promoting collaboration and team science among researchers; partnering with communities; commercialization of new products, services and treatment approaches; and streamlining regulatory and other research processes.
Targeted funding from the institute can also help speed the pace of research. A pilot grant helped Zharov move closer to commercialization by supporting development of a clinical prototype of a circulating tumor cell detection device.
“The purpose of our efforts is to improve the health and health care of Arkansans, so we are supporting research that impacts Arkansas,” James said. “This is vitally important given our state’s health status ranking of 49th nationally with high rates of obesity, diabetes and cancer, along with underlying lifestyles that contribute to these conditions.”
The institute’s mission includes establishing enduring partnerships with communities across the state, especially rural and medically underserved communities. This community engagement work is helping ensure that research is relevant to Arkansans.
Community engagement, along with a pilot grant from the institute, helped researchers at the UAMS campus in northwest Arkansas obtain two national grants totaling $5.1 million to study diabetes and other chronic diseases in the underserved Marshallese, Hispanic and Hmong communities.
The future of translational research depends on the support and development of talented new researchers, said Mary Aitken, M.D., M.P.H., who co-leads the institute’s KL2 Mentored Career Development Program with Pedro Delgado, M.D. A cornerstone of the institute, the KL2 program helps new researchers gain competence in research approaches and work in teams to maximize success.
Since 2009, 16 junior faculty have been named KL2 scholars, with many establishing funded, independent research programs.
“The KL2 gave me the opportunity to redirect my medical career toward research while I was completing a clinical fellowship in asthma and immunology at the University of Virginia,” said Hot Springs native Joshua Kennedy, M.D., who received a KL2 award in 2013. “The award provided the means to pursue research in my home state with a team that is helping advance asthma research on a national scale.”
Two former scholars, Dennis Kuo, M.D., and Holly Felix, Ph.D., have competed successfully for federal grants and presented their findings at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with their published work in the prestigious health policy journal Health Affairs.
“One of our goals is to help train the next generation of translational researchers,” Aitken said. “Our graduates are providing a great return on investment.”
This article originally appeared in the UAMS Journal magazine.
Nancy Gray, Ph.D., has spent her first six months as UAMS BioVentures director focused on getting to know researchers and staff. She’s met with researchers interested in generating intellectual property, those who have generated intellectual property, and some who aren’t sure if they have.
“What I’ve found is that most researchers are so involved in the day-to-day of their programs that, generally, they aren’t thinking about whether they have invented something,” she said. “I believe there’s a lot more intellectual property here that we can capture.”
Gray’s outreach so far as generated an increasing number of researcher phone calls and emails, but she would like to receive more.
“If you have a question, call BioVentures,” she said. “Even if we don’t have an answer, we’ll find an answer. I would like to see BioVentures viewed as a resource as people think about their research work and what it might lead to in terms of commercialization.”
Gray has encountered a few misconceptions here, as well, such as that intellectual property relates only to patents, while in reality it may also involve copyright material and know-how.
BioVentures’ role includes finding licensees for a researcher’s intellectual property if the researcher chooses not to create a spin-off company. Gray has also focused on finding partners for UAMS researchers either through licensing of intellectual property or for sponsored research. While BioVentures does not manage sponsored research agreements, she said, there are opportunities for corporate sponsorships to develop early stage intellectual property through sponsored research or product licenses.
“If a researcher knows a certain company might be interested in their work, I would encourage them to reach out to BioVentures,” she said.
Another misconception Gray noted is that BioVentures offers a source of funding, as implied by its name. Although it doesn’t provide funding, Gray is in a position to help with that too.
“We’re not a venture group, per se, but we have the expertise here,” she said, noting BioVentures staff with business and financial backgrounds and her more than 30 years in biomedical industries, including medicinal chemistry research, management of pharmaceutical research and development, and business operations. Her experience and professional connections allow Gray to direct researchers to the right people.
“Each piece of intellectual property might have a different audience,” she said. “If it’s diagnostic based, the audience of companies would be much different than if it’s a therapeutic or vaccine or device.”
Gray’s experience also includes that of researcher and product developer. She is the inventor on 31 issued U.S. patents and the author of 23 publications. Her research on central nervous system diseases resulted in three products being accepted for clinical development in five years. She was also instrumental in the development of two marketed second generation antihistamines, Allegra and Xyxal.
UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) Director Laura James, M.D., noted that BioVentures is important to UAMS’ mission to improve its translation of new knowledge and discoveries into better health and health care. Gray participated in TRI’s strategic planning retreat just weeks after she arrived in March and is working with TRI on a program to reach a broader audience of researchers with an introduction to the concepts of intellectual property and the importance of protecting inventions.
Gray came to UAMS from the Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, where she was vice president for corporate development. There, she led corporate development opportunities, including mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances, joint ventures, minority investments, technology licenses and divestitures for the life sciences, engineering, and environment and energy business. Gray completed one joint venture agreement, 30 license agreements and 37 collaboration agreements.
Prior to her time at the Southern Research Institute, Gray worked in various executive roles at Beijing Med-Pharm Corporation, Vaxinnate Corportation and Elan Corporation. She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Bucknell University and her doctorate in medicinal chemistry from the University of Illinois.
Gray can be reached at nmgray@uams.edu or (501) 686-6696.
