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$36 Million NIH Grant to Spur Innovation,
Improved Patient Care
The only Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences in Texas
will ensure that medical advances
reach people who need them
Cheers and champagne were the order of the day Oct. 3, when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston a $36 million, five-year grant to enhance clinical and translational research, ultimately improving patient care and community health.
Frank Arnett, M.D., explains the significance of clinical and translational
sciences to KTRK-TV reporter
Christi Myers. Photo by Ester Fant
With the federal funding, the UT Health Science Center will become home to one of the nation’s first Centers for Clinical and Translational Sciences and the only one of its kind in Texas. The health science center and the UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center partnered in planning the grant and will collaborate on many research and educational activities supported by the new center.
The health science center also will work on collaborative projects with Memorial Hermann Healthcare System and at the UT School of Public Health’s Brownsville Regional Campus.
The new center will be designed to spur research innovation so that new treatments can be developed more efficiently and delivered more quickly to patients.
Improving the Nation’s Health
“It is meant to improve the nation’s health,” said Frank C. Arnett, M.D., the UT Health Science Center’s principal investigator and newly appointed director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS). “This new program was created to advance the speed and sophistication of applying basic science findings to the patient care arena.”
The UT Health Science Center was one of only 12 academic health centers in the country to earn a highly competitive Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) this year. NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., said these institutions make up a new, national consortium.
“The development of this consortium represents the first systematic change in our approach to clinical research in 50 years,” Zerhouni said. “Working together, these sites will serve as discovery engines that will improve medical care by applying new scientific advances to real world practice. We expect to see new approaches reach underserved populations, local community organizations and health care providers to ensure that medical advances are reaching the people who need them.”
Toasting the National Institutes of Health announcement of funding for a
new Center for Clinical and
Translational Sciences (CCTS) are, from left,
Peter Davies, M.D., Ph.D., UT executive vice president, Research;
Cheryl
Chanaud, executive director, Center for Clinical Innovation and Research,
Memorial Hermann-
Texas Medical Center; Frank Arnett, M.D., UT Medical
School, director,
CCTS; Razelle Kurzrock, M.D.,
UT M. D. Anderson Cancer
Center, co-director, CCTS; Pablo Okhuysen, M.D., UT Medical School,
codirector,
CCTS; Juanita Romans, CEO, Memorial Hermann; and John
Mendelsohn, M.D., president,
M. D. Anderson. Photo by Ester Fant
World-Class Science
James T. Willerson, M.D., president of the UT Health Science Center, said the grant recognizes the university’s successful efforts in the past five years to recruit and retain outstanding scientists and physicians and to develop the superb physical facilities necessary to support world-class science. Selection for the award, he said, reflects “our commitment to advancing clinical and translational research across the full spectrum of the health sciences involving the participation of scores of excellent educators and researchers” from all six of the health science center’s schools.
“Accomplishment of these goals would not have been possible without the support of our elected leaders at the federal and state level, the Texas legislature, the UT System Board of Regents, and the tremendous generosity of the Houston community,” Willerson said. “We are eager to move forward in this endeavor to make human life better.”
James T. Willerson, M.D., president of M. D. Anderson, said, “This outstanding collaboration permits us to use clinical research centers and shared technologies at both institutions more effectively to improve clinical trials, mentor young investigators, create novel approaches to translational science and advance therapies faster. The awarding of this grant acknowledges the collaborative atmosphere and the specialized expertise and outreach found in the Texas Medical Center.”
Juanita Romans, chief executive officer of Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, said, “Our relationship with The University of Texas benefits our patients every day through the development of innovative and pioneering treatments. We are delighted to provide facilities and support for UT’s continued and expanding health care research programs.”
Jerry S. Wolinsky, M.D., interim dean of the UT Medical School at Houston, said the grant award is a “wonderful success. It is a program that needed to be instituted, and we are very pleased for the NIH support with funding in the first round.”
The UT School of Public Health’s Brownsville Regional Campus, which has another Clinical Research Unit, will join the CCTS and pursue studies in health disparities among the largely Hispanic population there.
“Ultimately, translational research must be more broadly applied to population-based studies and to health intervention strategies,” said Joseph B. McCormick, M.D., regional dean of the school’s Brownsville campus. “This grant will provide invaluable tools for assessing interventions, as well as learning how prevention can play a larger role in population health.”
Supporting Young Investigators
The grant program encourages institutions to propose new approaches, including new organizational models and training programs at graduate and postgraduate levels. A major goal of the health science center’s CCTS is to support young investigators and foster original research.
“We’ll be able to provide our expertise and help young investigators with study designs, statistics, regulatory and ethical issues, and so much more,” said Arnett, professor, holder of the Elizabeth Bidgood Chair in Rheumatology and director of the NIH Center for Research Translation in Scleroderma at the UT Medical School.
In addition, the center will serve as an “engine for innovation,” Arnett said.
“We have been gathering some of the most successful and novel-thinking researchers to serve as a think tank,” Arnett said. “There is so much science out there that is applicable to so many human diseases. New scientific information and technologies are not being integrated fast enough or being applied to multiple biomedical disciplines in a timely manner.”
State-of-the-art core laboratories in genetics, micro-arrays, proteomics, immunology and MRI imaging will help facilitate more rapid research results, Arnett said.
In addition, the informatics core component will help researchers “efficiently locate relevant literature, analyze genomic/proteomic data and discover useful knowledge within large, seemingly unrelated, databases,” said Elmer Bernstam, M.D., associate professor at the UT School of Health Information Sciences at Houston and co-director of the informatics core, along with Dean Jack Smith, M.D., Ph.D.
The reviewers were particularly impressed, Arnett said, “with our bioinformatics programs, plans for a research medical record and plans for data sharing electronically with the national CTSA program, as well as our ‘think tank’ and core technologies, but in none of the areas did we receive less than an excellent evaluation.”
CCTS co-directors include Pablo C. Okhuysen, M.D., professor and program director of the University Clinical Research Center; Jon E. Tyson, M.D., professor and director of the Center for Clinical Research and Evidence-Based Medicine; and Razelle Kurzrock, M.D., professor of medicine at M. D. Anderson and the UT Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston.
By Meredith Raine, Institutional Advancement