The Translational Research Institute (TRI) has established a mechanism that will help UAMS investigators obtain the credentials necessary to use Veterans Health Administration (VHA) data repositories in their research. The VHA is the United States’ largest integrated health care system with more than 1,700 sites of care, serving 8.76 million veterans each year. This integrated health network allows investigators to explore a wide range of research questions. TRI is providing funding for administrative and programmer support to assist with credentialing and preliminary technical support. To learn more, contact TRIservices@uams.edu.

The Translational Research Institute (TRI) will expand clinical research training with support from a $75,000 supplemental award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).

TRI will use the funding over the next six months to support the clinical research specialist program and expand curriculum and online training opportunities. A primary goal of NCATS is to ensure that all study personnel are equipped with the necessary and fundamental competencies to execute the highest quality clinical studies. The NCATS award is also expected to help streamline and standardize training in Good Clinical Practice across the 62 Clinical and Translational Sciences Award (CTSA) consortium sites.

This list of funding opportunities was updated Oct. 10 and includes a tab with archived funding opportunities that remain open.

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Translational Research Institute (TRI) and the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (UAF) have awarded $20,000 for a telehealth pilot research project led by Sarah Rhoads Kinder, Ph.D., D.N.P., an assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Her project is titled, “Postpartum Management of the Pregnancy Complicated by Preeclampsia: A Pilot Study Using Health Monitoring at Home.” The one-year award includes an additional $5,000 from UAF because Kinder is collaborating with Christina Serrano, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems. The pilot was chosen from three telehealth pilot applications.

Research protocols submitted through CLARA are no longer receiving an automatic content review prior to the protocols’ arrival at the UAMS Institutional Review Board (IRB) office. On Oct. 13, the UAMS Translational Research Services Center (TRSC) began routing all submissions not requiring budget/coverage analysis directly to the IRB, where they will receive their first content review. The practice traditionally has involved an automatic pre-IRB review by the Research Support Center (now part of the TRSC). To avoid redundancy due to the IRB office having its own pre-IRB review process, this TRSC service is now being provided only at the request of researchers. Investigators who would like assistance with protocol development and IRB submission may request services at TRIservices@uams.edu.

Jiang Bian, Ph.D., found that TRI has had a positive impact on research at UAMS.

A recent analysis found that TRI has played an important and effective role in promoting collaborative research at UAMS.

Led by Jiang Bian, Ph.D., the social network analysis looked at researcher collaborations based on grant data from 2006 to 2012. UAMS received its Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) in 2009.

Bian’s work has led to new informatics tools for measuring the efficiency of UAMS’ research environment, whether it is improving, and whether external factors are playing a role. The analysis was published in the February 2014 Journal of Biomedical Informatics.

“We found that the CTSA and the establishment of TRI has had a positive impact,” said Bian, a researcher in the Department of Biomedical Informatics whose analysis was supported by TRI. “Prior to the TRI, there were far fewer collaborations and smaller, more isolated groups of researchers.”

Prediction Model
An intriguing element to his work is a statistical model showing which researchers should collaborate. The model was developed using 80 percent of the researcher population and then verified by applying it to the other 20 percent.

“Being able to predict is pretty exciting,” Bian said. “It helps people understand what sort of collaboration environment we have and whether the things we’re doing are enriching the environment for collaboration.”

Bian said TRI will reach out to researchers who are not collaborating but who should be based on the prediction model. “We’ll share our results with them so that they’re aware of the opportunity.”

In addition, Bian is developing visual analytics for TRI. The visualization tool, based on collaborations found in grant data, is designed to help any audience understand the nature of research networks and how they may evolve over time. The tool can track individual UAMS researchers as well as groups of researchers over time.

View Bian’s poster presentation: Interactive visualization for understanding and analyzing biomedical research collaboration networks.

The Translational Research Institute (TRI) has awarded six UAMS researchers approximately $50,000 each for pilot studies. The annual awards are made to those studies with the strongest likelihood of leading to improved health and health care. The researchers and their project titles are:

Paul Gottschall, Ph.D., College of Medicine (COM), Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology: Targeting lecticans to enhance synaptic plasticity in Alzheimer’s disease
Gur Kaushal, Ph.D., COM, Department of Internal Medicine: Antifibrotic therapy by upregulation of autophagy to reverse renal fibrosis in chronic kidney disease
Dennis Kuo, M.D., COM, Department of Pediatrics: Barriers and facilitators to health care transition from pediatric to adult health care
Lee Ann MacMillan-Crow, Ph.D., COM, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology: Novel therapy to reduce injury to human donor kidneys prior to transplant
Mark Mennemeier, Ph.D., COM, Department of Neurobiology & Developmental Sciences: A joint CTSA (Clinical and Translational Science Award) project with WUSM (Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis) leading to a phase II clinical trial for tinnitus
Steven Post, Ph.D., COM, Department of Pathology: Pathological features that predict clinical outcome in vulvar squamous cell carcinoma patients
TRI utilizes National Institutes of Health (NIH) Study Section review criteria in making its selections. Reviewers are not involved in the review and scoring of applications where potential conflicts of interest exist.

This list of funding opportunities was updated Sept. 9 and includes a tab with archived funding opportunities that remain open.

Camille Hart, M.P.H., was recently named TRI’s Community Engagement program manager and Nicola Spencer was named Community Engagement program coordinator. Hart received her Master of Public Health degree at Tulane University in May and has extensive experience with community engagement and has worked on several research projects.

Prior to graduate school she worked in the Office of Community-Based Public Health in the UAMS College of Public Health writing a newsletter and engaging students in community-based projects. She has several years of experience on a wide range of community initiatives. Hart is replacing Nakita Lovelady, M.P.H., who is pursuing her doctorate in Health Promotion and Prevention Research at the UAMS College of Public Health.

Spencer’s work will have a special emphasis on a Population Health project in central Arkansas, helping recruit community sites and coordinating work with students. She will also help with meeting coordination and logistics as well as managing the Community Engagement program’s equipment library.

Alison Oliveto, Ph.D., was recently named director of TRI’s Translational Research Services Center (TRSC).

Oliveto is a tenured professor in the Center for Addiction Research and vice chair for Research in the Department of Psychiatry where she has been faculty since 2004. Besides having a long history of NIH funding, service on NIH study sections, and service on UAMS research-related committees, she has had several administrative leadership roles during her tenure at Yale University as well as at UAMS to facilitate the research enterprise. Oliveto is a strong advocate for investigators and has a contagious enthusiasm for facilitating translational research at UAMS.

Jean McSweeney, Ph.D., will remain as the co-director of TRSC. Tom Wells, M.D., will remain in the TRSC with his primary responsibilities being 1) oversight budget development and 2) Medical Director of the Clinical Research Services Core (CRSC). Paula Roberson, Ph.D., will continue to provide oversight of the biostatistics services within the TRSC.