UT Health Science Center Receives
$36 Million NIH Grant to Spur Innovation
HOUSTON – (Oct. 3, 2006) – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today 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.
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. The health science center and The University of Texas 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 The University of Texas School of Public Health’s Brownsville Regional Campus.
UT projects on genetics
of TB, diabetes & rickets
stem from CCTS seed funding...
UT-Houston’s center – the only one of its kind in Texas – will be designed to spur research innovation so that new treatments can be developed more efficiently and delivered more quickly to patients.
“It is meant to improve the nation’s health,” said Frank C. Arnett, M.D., UT-Houston’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 basic science findings to the patient care arena.”
UT-Houston was one of only 12 academic health centers in the country to earn a highly-competitive Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) this year. The CTSA program is an NIH Roadmap for Medical Research initiative and will be administered by the National Center for Research Resources, a component of the NIH.
NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., said these 12 institutions make up a new, national consortium that will transform how clinical and translational research is conducted.
“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.”
James T. Willerson, M.D., president of UT-Houston, said the grant is recognition of 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.
“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.”
“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,” said John Mendelsohn, M.D., president of M. D. Anderson.
“Our relationship with the University of Texas benefits our patients every day through the development of innovative and pioneering treatments,” said Juanita Romans, CEO of Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center. “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 University of Texas Medical School at Houston, said the grant award is a “wonderful success” for the school. “It is a program that needed to be instituted, and we are very pleased for the NIH support with funding in the first round,” Wolinsky said.
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.
The grant program encourages institutions to propose new approaches to clinical and translational research, including new organizational models and training programs at graduate and post-graduate levels.
A major goal of UT-Houston’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 and Elizabeth Bidgood Chair in Rheumatology and director of the NIH/NIAMS Center for Research Translation in Scleroderma at the UT Medical School.
In addition to training for researchers, 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. We need to change that by coming up with creative ways to more quickly get results from the laboratory bench to the patient’s bedside and clinic.”
Core, state-of-the-art laboratories in genetics, micro-arrays, proteomics, immunology and MRI imaging will help facilitate more rapid research results, Arnett said.
The center, which will be constructed on the top floor of the UT Medical School at 6431 Fannin, is expected to be complete within the next year. It will represent an expansion of the University Clinical Research Center at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center and the Center for Clinical Research and Evidence-Based Medicine at the UT Medical School.
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.
An additional 52 academic health centers are receiving planning grants to help them prepare applications to join the consortium. When fully implemented in 2012, about 60 institutions will be linked together to energize the discipline of clinical and translational science.
In addition to the UT Health Science Center at Houston, NIH announced today that the following institutions received the first set of awards for nearly a five-year period:
Columbia University Health Sciences (New York, N.Y.)
Duke University (Durham N.C.)
Mayo Clinic College of Medicine (Rochester, Minn.)
Oregon Health & Science University (Portland, Ore.)
Rockefeller University (New York, N.Y.)
University of California, Davis (Davis. Calif.)
University of California, San Francisco (San Francisco, Calif.)
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pa.)
University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
University of Rochester (Rochester, N.Y.)
Yale University (New Haven, Conn.)
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