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TRI Study of the Month

Sukanthi Kovvuru, M.D., consults with TRI’s Simone Walls, MBA, MPH, CHES, CRS, regulatory specialist for the HEALY ALS Platform Trial.

UAMS Principal Investigator: Sukanthi Kovvuru, M.D., assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Neurology

Summary: The HEALY ALS Platform Trial is a multi-center, multi-regimen clinical trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of multiple investigational products for the treatment of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). UAMS will begin with Regimen E – SLS-005 Trehalose and a matching placebo.

Significance: Researchers hope that the trial can identify a safe drug that will slow ALS’ rate of progression and/or improve ALS symptoms.

TRI Services: Medicare coverage analysis, study budget development, regulatory management, clinical/nurse coordinator and finance support.

Sponsor/Clinical Coordinating Center: Merit Cudkowicz, M.D., Director, Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS at Massachusetts General Hospital

TRI Employees Raise Funds, Serve Meals at Our House

Residents of Our House recently enjoyed a lunch and dinner courtesy of employees at the UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI).

TRI volunteers at lunch were: (left side, front to back) Ladiedra Donahue, Ty Stacey (lead), Lasha Fite, Paul Duguid (lead); (right, front to back) Vallon Williams, Simone Walls, David Avery and Chaz England.

With staff donations totaling almost $900, the TRI Employee Council was able to prepare homemade meals for 30 residents at lunch and 75 residents at dinner. Lunch included oven-baked barbecue chicken sandwiches, baked beans, coleslaw and Rice Krispie treats. The dinner menu was lasagna, fresh salad, garlic bread and homemade fresh baked cookies.

TRI’s Crystal Walter (front), Crystal Sparks and Paul Duguid prepare trays for the evening meal.

Our House’s mission is to empower homeless or near-homeless families and individuals to succeed in the workforce, school, and life through hard work, wise decision-making and active participation in the community.

TRI volunteers provided about 30 meals to Our House residents at lunch and about 75 were served at dinner. — TRI volunteers provided about 30 meals to Our House residents at lunch, and about 75 were served at dinner.

“We are super thankful for organizations like the UAMS Translational Research Institute who come out and help their community in such a big way by serving meals for the residents at Our House,” said Caroline Robbins, Our House development director. “Preparing meals and gathering around a meal table include a lot of components of what building a community around yourself looks like, and we value partners who are willing to take the time to do that with our clients every single month.”

Paul Duguid, MPH, leads the TRI Employee Council, which organized the community service project.

“I’m happy to work where the staff are committed to teamwork and service to our community,” said Duguid, assistant director of Funding Programs. “My TRI colleagues consistently rally around events to give back to those in the community, both on and off campus, and I’m incredibly proud of working shoulder to shoulder to prepare and serve meals at Our House with them.”

TRI volunteers were: Paul Duguid (lead), Ty Stacey (lead), David Avery, Lasha Fite, Chaz England, LaDiedra Donahue, Laura James, M.D., Robin Liston, Crystal Sparks, Simone Walls, Crystal Walter, and Vallon Williams.

KL2 Meeting Sparks Junior Investigators’ Collaboration, Three Publications

*Maryam Garza, Ph.D., and Tremaine Williams, Ed.D., share a laugh during a recent meeting.*

A routine monthly meeting, a comment and a question were the genesis for three publications this year by two TRI KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Program scholars.

Maryam Garza, Ph.D., MPH, MMCi, and Tremaine Williams, Ed.D., who became KL2 scholars in 2021, are co-authors on papers in BMC Medical Research Methodology; Journal of Multimorbidity and Comorbidity; and Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

For Garza and Williams, assistant professors in the College of Medicine Department of Biomedical Informatics, their early success speaks to the testimonies they have heard about the power of collaboration and team science.

“As early career investigators and KL2 scholars, we’re trying to carry out our research, write papers and grants, and it’s a lot to get done by yourself,” Garza said. “So collaboration is really helpful to get you out of any holes and elevate the quality of the work. It is also much more enjoyable to not be alone in this work.”

Williams agreed. “When I’ve taken a project as far as I can, I know I can go to Maryam and she will have some questions, suggestions or substantial contributions to guide the direction of the work.”

The two realized the opportunity for collaboration during a regular monthly meeting of the KL2 scholars as Williams gave his status report. He heard Garza say, “Ooh, I didn’t realize how much our worlds intersect.”

Her comment prompted him to ask the group if anyone was interested in collaborating. “Maryam was the first person to say, ‘Yes, I would love to collaborate,’ so it went from there,” he said.

Both are working in the area of data quality, and their worlds intersect at how to streamline processes of getting that data from point A to point B.

Garza’s work is focused on overcoming data-related barriers that slow the search for cures and vaccines.

“Informatics has a critical role to play improving the data pipeline, which will translate to more efficient bench-to-bedside processes,” Garza said. “No one can run clinical trials and leverage the electronic health record if the data doesn’t exist.”

Williams’ work has focused on expanding the informatics capacity of the electronic health record to support patients with two or more chronic conditions, referred to as multimorbidity patients.

“These multimorbidity patients are behind the curve because medical care has been traditionally siloed into addressing single chronic diseases, and the data we have is a byproduct of those treatments,” he said. “The informatics infrastructure is lagging. We don’t have, for example, clinical data repositories or places that could support very robust, global clinical and translational research for multimorbidity patients.”

He noted that Garza is working on an emerging data standard called HL7® FHIR® (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources 1 ), which defines how health care information can be transferred between information systems regardless of how those systems store it.

“Maryam is going to change the world with the work that she’s doing to enable the use of real world data in real time,” Williams said. “But we can’t apply much of Maryam’s work on the FHIR standards with multimorbidity patients because most health care systems don’t currently have the data infrastructure needed for the management and longitudinal tracking of the compounding of chronic diseases.”

TRI Associate Director John Arthur, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of the KL2 Program, praised Garza and Williams for their enthusiastic collaboration.

“They are setting a great example for their colleagues in the KL2 Program as well as our entire research community,” said Arthur, also chief of the Division of Nephrology in the Department of Internal Medicine. “I am excited by the strength of their work and happy that the KL2 Program became a conduit for their collaboration.”

Williams said the collaboration was enabled in large part because of the tone set by the KL2 Program leaders, Arthur, Elisabet Borsheim, Ph.D., and Carolyn Greene, Ph.D.

“The environment in the monthly KL2 meetings is very warm, very supportive,” Williams said.

Hoping to capitalize on their efforts, Garza and Williams recently submitted an R01 grant application to the National Institutes of Health. And beyond that, they are dreaming big.

“We are going to grow old together as collaborators,” Garza said, “and who knows, maybe we’ll win the Nobel Prize.”

New Researchers Find Valuable Resources at Research Expo 2022

Veronica Smith, who directs the UAMS Rural Research Network, speaks with Ruiqi Cen, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public. Health. (Image credit: Bryan Clifton)

Research Expo 2022 arrived at a great time for Lisa Jansen, Ph.D., and more than 100 other researchers wanting to learn about and leverage the numerous research resources available at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), Arkansas Children’s Research Institute (ACRI) and the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System (CAVHS).

Lisa Jansen, Ph.D., poses with a selfie frame during the expo.

“I am a new researcher, so I came to the Expo today to learn about all the options and possibilities that are out there,” said Jansen, who joined UAMS in January as an assistant professor in the College of Health Professions Department of Dietetics and Nutrition. “I love being able to directly ask questions to the representatives of these services. It’s better than just clicking on a website, and they were great at helping me understand how their services can benefit my research.”

Sponsored by the UAMS Translational Research Institute and the Division of Research and Innovation, the Research Expo on Sept. 21 promoted at least 47 research services and resources. The late afternoon event included food, beverages and door prizes.

Translational Research Institute Director Laura James, M.D., told the crowd that the event has grown from its origins six years ago to include research resources from UAMS, ACRI and CAVHS.

Nadim Nicolas Ghanem, M.D., visits with Joe Schaffner of the Institute for Digital Health & Innovation.

“I’m thrilled with this turnout,” she said. “It’s great to see everybody here and feel the enthusiasm in this room tonight.”

Shuk-Mei Ho, Ph.D., vice chancellor for the Division of Research and Innovation, said she was also thrilled that so many colleagues participated, noting that UAMS’ faculty, staff and students are hungry for new knowledge and innovations that can improve human health. Successful research projects, she said, require the support of a large group of research administrators.

“They are the heroes behind the frontline. They work tirelessly behind the scenes helping researchers with protocols, submissions, compliance, regulatory affairs, fiscal management, contracts and tech transfer,” Ho said. “They are the bells and whistles of any new research endeavor. Research Expo 2022 was a great event allowing the ‘engines’ to meet the ‘bells and whistles.’”

Zhong Su, Ph.D., talks to Nancy Rusch, Ph.D., and Pam Kahler, representing TRI’s Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program for postdoctoral fellows.

Nadim Nicolas Ghanem, M.D., a first-year fellow in the UAMS/Arkansas Children’s Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program, is new to the United States, so having face-to-face conversations with people at the expo was especially valuable, he said.

“Seeing all the available resources for research was great for someone like me coming from abroad,” Ghanem said. “It was a great day to meet new people and to learn more about the different tools I can potentially use in research.”

Zhong Su, Ph.D., MBA, who joined UAMS from the University of Florida in 2021, said the expo was a great way to gain institutional knowledge that he needs as a researcher.

“It’s a really good opportunity for people to get all the different aspects of research-related information right away,” said Su, a professor in the College of Medicine Department of Radiation Oncology at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. “You can talk to the people directly, quickly, instead of having to dig on the website.”

Su, a medical physicist, said he was happy to learn about the many sources of support, including grant funding opportunities, which he plans to pursue as part of his work with Arkansas’ first Proton Center. Proton therapy is a state-of-the-art technology that serves as an alternative to conventional radiation therapy, using a precisely focused high-energy proton beam to target tumors, often in hard-to-reach areas, with minimum impact of surrounding healthy tissue.

Sharon Sanders, Ph.D., MPH, said the expo is helpful to her role as research program manager at the Center for Childhood Obesity Prevention based at ACRI.

“As a community engagement person, I’m always looking for an opportunity to network with different people,” Sanders said. “The resources represented here at the expo can be helpful for our researchers at the Center for Childhood Obesity Prevention. We want to make sure we have as many resources and tools available to them as possible to make them more successful.”

For example, she said the Translational Research Institute-supported Center for Health Literacy can be a good resource for researchers at her center.

“Like our community engagement program, the Center for Health Literacy emphasizes the importance of communication and making sure that researchers use plain language and avoid jargon,” Sanders said. “We will point our researchers to the Center for Health Literacy because that is a resource that will be very helpful to them.”

Jansen pointed to the Center for Implementation Research and Center for Health Literacy as examples of newly discovered beneficial resources.

“They can help me with clinical trials as I am setting them up to ensure that they go smoothly and the methodology is sound,” Jansen said.

Ghanem said he especially enjoyed talking with representatives of the Translational Research Institute-supported Arkansas Clinical Data Repository and from the Institute for Digital Health & Innovation and BioVentures.

“As a Clinical Informatics fellow, that was more of my domain,” he said. “We can analyze UAMS’ data repositories to find new patterns and hopefully help improve care. And as family physician, I enjoyed playing around with the point of care devices IDHI had to offer while discovering new opportunities to provide care in the digital era.”

“It was also great to connect with the Institutional Review Board representatives,” Ghanem said. “It’s always important to ensure that the process goes smoothly with the IRB. Everyone was really nice, and it was great to connect with them.”

The TRIbune Is Here

In this month’s TRIbune newsletter, we highlight the productive collaboration of two KL2 Program Scholars, Maryam Garza, Ph.D., and Tremaine Williams, Ed.D. Since establishing their collaboration last year, Garza and Williams have generated three publications and an R01 application. We also note an important KL2 Information Session for prospective applicants on Oct. 6, as well as a Path 2 K Grant Writing Program led by Mario Schootman, Ph.D.

This issue also reports the outcome of TRI’s Summer Writing Challenge 2022, and Our Study of the Month features Sukanthi Kovvuru, M.D., in the Department of Neurology.

Read The TRIbune.

KL2 Scholar Receives Prestigious National Award, $1 Million to Support Falls Research in Older Adults

Jennifer Vincenzo, Ph.D., MPH, PT, is only the third physical therapist to receive the Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award in Aging. (Image credit: Evan Lewis)

Jennifer L. Vincenzo, Ph.D., MPH, PT, recently became the first UAMS researcher to receive the national Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award in Aging, which comes with $1 million over five years.

The award will support Vincenzo’s work implementing a falls prevention strategy as a standard of care for all older adults attending outpatient physical therapy clinics. Her work has been supported by a TRI KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award.

The Beeson award stems from an initiative by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Federation for Aging Research, and the John A. Hartford Foundation. Their aim is “to develop a cadre of talented scientists prepared and willing to take an active leadership role in transformative change that will lead to improved health care outcomes,” according to the American Federation for Aging Research website.

Vincenzo is only the third physical therapist to receive the award, which typically goes to medical doctors.

“I am honored to be a Beeson Scholar and represent UAMS,” said Vincenzo, an associate professor in the College of Health Professions Department of Physical Therapy. “This award will allow me to address the public health issues of falls among older adults, which are a leading cause of morbidity, mortality and decreased quality of life.”

The Beeson award will help her integrate her falls prevention self-management plan that she developed in the last three years with the STEADI (Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths & Injuries) toolkit developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The STEADI toolkit, established in 2012 for physicians to integrate falls prevention into daily practice, has not been widely adopted, but Vincenzo wants to change that. Her goal is to work with stakeholders to implement the integrated program as a standard of care in outpatient physical therapy clinics, starting at UAMS.

Vincenzo established her fall prevention self-management plan through work supported by a UAMS Translational Research Institute KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award. She credits the KL2 support that began in 2019 as a key to her success. She received two years (plus a one-year extension) of salary support, research funding, and translational research training, including training in implementation science.

“I would not be where I am without the support of UAMS, the Translational Research Institute, and especially my colleagues in the Department of Physical Therapy,” she said. “The Beeson award will allow me to advance my knowledge and skills as an implementation scientist in aging under the mentorship of Geoffrey Curran, Ph.D., and Jeanne Wei, M.D., Ph.D., who also served as mentors on my KL2.”

Curran is director of the UAMS Center for Implementation Research and professor of pharmacy practice in the College of Pharmacy. Wei is executive director of the UAMS Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging and chair of the Donald W. Reynolds Department of Geriatrics in the College of Medicine.

Translational Research Institute Director Laura James, M.D., said Vincenzo’s success is a great example of how the KL2 program can prepare talented early-career researchers and help them fast track their research programs.

“Dr. Vincenzo has seized on the opportunities provided by the KL2 program, developing and advancing a plan with significant promise for reducing falls among older adults,” said James, UAMS associate vice chancellor of Clinical and Translational Research. “She has also positioned herself for even greater success as a leader in her field.”

Vincenzo’s KL2 work led to state and national leadership appointments, including chair of the Balance and Falls Special Interest Group – American Physical Therapy Association-Geriatrics (APTA-G); and a member of the APTA-G Board. She is also chair of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Aging in Arkansas.

The KL2 program at the Translational Research Institute is supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health, Clinical and Translational Science Award KL2 TR003108.

TRI Announces Five Implementation Science Scholars

Foster (Image credit: Bryan Clifton/UAMS)

The UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) and UAMS Center for Implementation Research (CIR) have selected five clinical faculty as 2023 Implementation Science Scholars. Using the principles of implementation science, CIR faculty will guide the scholars through 10 didactic sessions per year and provide oversight and mentoring for their experiential implementation science projects. The two-year program will provide 20% salary support (up to salary cap).

The scholars and their project titles are:

Stephen Foster, M.D., assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, UAMS Northeast Regional Campus

Project: Improving Outcomes for Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in the Primary Care Setting through Electronic Health Record Optimization

Chelsea Mathews, M.D., assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, UAMS and Arkansas Children’s Hospital

Project: Improving the Patient Experience through Journey Mapping at the Orthopaedic and Spine Hospital (under construction at UAMS)

Veronica M. Raney, M.D., assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry; interim director, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; medical director, Child Study Center, UAMS

Project: Implementation of Specialized Mental Health Services to Address Gaps in Care for Transitional Age Youth (TAY)

Jarna Shah, M.D., assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Anesthesia, Chronic Pain Division, UAMS

Project: Implementation of Nutrition Screening in Patients Undergoing Elective Joint Replacement Surgery

Shruti Tewar, MBBS, MPH, associate professor, College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, Division of Developmental and Rehabilitative Medicine, UAMS

Project: Implementation of Guidelines for Medication Management of Complex ADHD in Children

Researchers’ Productive Summer Nets 77 Manuscripts in TRI Writing Challenge

Attendees check out the ice cream flavors at the celebration concluding the Summer 2022 Writing Challenge. — Attendees check out the ice cream flavors at the celebration concluding the TRI Summer 2022 Writing Challenge.

*TRI Director Laura James, M.D., with Zulema Udaondo, Ph.D., who won for Best Representation of Informatics Supported Research.*

UAMS-affiliated researchers who have received Translational Research Institute (TRI) support submitted 77 research manuscripts as part of the Summer 2022 Writing Challenge, TRI Director Laura James, M.D., announced at an Ice Cream Social celebration to recognize the contributing researchers.

Held jointly at UAMS campuses in Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas, the Thursday, Sept. 8 event featuring Loblolly Creamery ice cream included prizes in six categories and numerous door prizes.

“We are thrilled to have received so many manuscript submissions and nearly match our total of 85 a year ago,” James said. “This is a huge accomplishment, reflecting the dedication of our faculty to complete an important part of research, which is the dissemination of research findings. In particular, the enthusiasm of our junior faculty is noteworthy and reflects the energy and vibrancy of our early-stage researcher community.”

*Umesh Wankhade, Ph.D., won a dinner with TRI Director Laura James, M.D.*

Below are the winners announced at Thursday’s event:

Jennifer Andersen, Ph.D.
Astounding Apprentice Award: Most Submitted Manuscripts (seven) for the Rank of Assistant Professor/Instructor
Prize: TRI will pay for a manuscript submission fee

Chenghui Li, Ph.D.
Wise Wordsmith Award: Most Submitted Manuscripts (four) for the Rank of Associate Professor
Prize: Free statistical consultation

David Ussery, Ph.D.
Sage Scribe Award: Most Submitted Manuscripts (four) for the Rank of Professor
Prize: TRI will submit a manuscript

TRI Director Laura James, M.D., interacts with attendees in Northwest Arkansas.

Zulema Udaondo, Ph.D.
Best Representation of Informatics Supported Research
Prize: Wooden pen set

Melissa Zielinski, Ph.D.
Best Representation of Implementation Science
Prize: UAMS tumbler

Jennifer Andersen, Ph.D.
Most Reflective of Community Engagement and Partnerships
Prize: UAMS travel blanket

Reid Landes, Ph.D., enjoys the Loblolly ice cream offered at the event.

Umesh Wankhade, Ph.D., won a special door prize added this year, “A Delightful Dinner with the Director (James).”

The 77 total submissions included:

14 submissions from Professors
16 submissions from Associate Professors
37 submissions from Assistant Professors
10 submissions from staff/others.

TRI Study of the Month

TRI’s David Avery, senior director of Clinical Research Operations, with UAMS investigators Gohoar Azhar, M.D., and Jeanne Y. Wei, M.D., Ph.D.

UAMS Investigators: Gohar Azhar, M.D., professor, Department of Geriatrics; director of Clinical Research, director of the Pat Walker Memory Clinic and Research Center, and co-director of the Cardiovascular Aging Program, UAMS

Jeanne Y. Wei, M.D., Ph.D., the Jackson T. Stephens Professor of Geriatrics; chair, Reynolds Department of Geriatrics, College of Medicine; executive director, Reynolds Institute on Aging, UAMS, and

Summary: The Pragmatic Evaluation of Events and Benefits of Lipid-Lowering in Older Adults (PREVENTABLE) trial is a multi-center study that will follow adults ages 75 and above without cardiovascular disease for five years as they receive either atorvastatin 40 mg or a placebo.

Significance: This large study aims to demonstrate the benefit of statins for reducing the primary composite of death, dementia and persistent disability and secondary composites including mild cognitive impairment and cardiovascular events.

TRI Services: Medicare coverage analysis, study budget development, regulatory management, biomedical informatics/clinical data extracts through the TRI-supported UAMS/Arkansas Clinical Data Repository (AR-CDR) and Epic support.

Sponsor/Clinical Coordinating Center: Duke University

Funding Agency: National Institute on Aging

Researchers Invited to Meet Potential Collaborators for Inter-institutional Grant Opportunity

UAMS researchers, are you interested in acquiring pilot funding for an inter-institutional collaboration but don’t have a collaborator?

We are here to help!

TRI and five other Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hubs are hosting virtual meet-and-greets on Sept. 28 and Oct. 26, at 2 p.m., to help connect you with potential collaborators. Researchers who register will be invited to briefly introduce their project ideas for a multi-site funding opportunity.

Participating institutions include University of Iowa, University of Kansas, University of Kentucky, University of New Mexico and University of Utah.

The CTSA institutions make up the Consortium of Rural States (COREs), which offers annual pilot funding of up to $25,000 per institution involved in a collaboration with two or more other COREs members.

The September COREs Connection meeting topic is, “Health Equity for Underrepresented Populations and Rural Health.” Registration is now open.

The October meeting topic will be “Maternal Health.” Registration will open Oct. 1.

To register, please email Breanne.Johnson@hsc.utah.edu

Learn more about the COREs Connection Zoom meetings here.