The CCTS Investigator            
Accelerating Discoveries Toward Better Health
May 2018    
The overall goal of the CCTS Training and Career Development is to establish and cultivate an institution-wide learning environment that is inherently linked to all aspects of the CCTS.

One way that the CCTS accomplishes this goal is through our TL1 and KL2 career mentoring programs. Each program supports clinical trainees in various levels of their career by providing financial stipends, access to the CCTS professional services and staff, tuition support, and more.

The KL2 Mentored Career Development grant is a program supporting the career development of junior faculty (with fewer than three years since their appointment) who conduct patient-oriented or translational research, The KL2 Award is available for a period of up to three years. Benefits include 75% salary support and appropriate fringe benefits, access to special training, and funds for research expenses. Up to 2 awards are funded.

The TL1 Mentored Clinical Research Training award provides full-time research and training support for predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows seeking additional training in clinical and translational research. Trainees with a clinical degree who are enrolled in a Master’s or Doctoral program are also eligible for the TL1 award.

The CCTS is currently accepting applications for both the TL1 and KL2 programs. You can learn more about the programs and apply below.

Thirty years ago, Michael Para, MD, professor of Infectious Diseases and Program Director of CCTS Recruitment, enrolled the first participant into an HIV/AIDS research study – the AIDS Clinical Trials Group 019. In 1990, the results of this placebo-controlled study conducted within the AIDS Clinical Trials Group showed that in the short term, zidovudine was effective in slowing progression to advanced disease in HIV-infected asymptomatic patients with low CD4 cell counts. 

We’ve come a long way since that first study. Thank you, Dr. Para, for thirty years of service to this community!

On Tues., May 29, the OSU CCTS, in collaboration with The Ohio State University Office of Responsible Research Practices and Nationwide Children's Hospital, held its annual FDA Regulated Research Conference. More than 100 professionals throughout the state of Ohio attended the conference, titled "FDA Regulation Research: IND/IDE Overview and Audit Preparedness."

Multiple speakers from academic institutions, regulatory experts, The Ohio State University, Wexner Medical Center, OSU College of Veterinary Medicine, and Nationwide Children's Hospital focused on the following key topics:

  • The pre-human IND/IDE process
  • IND/IDE process for human studies
  • Risk-based monitoring

Learn more about Regulatory and Ethics at the OSU CCTS.
The CCTS, in collaboration with the OSU Health Sciences Library, is hosting a three-hour workshop focused on crafting compelling and competitive NIH grant proposals with speaker Susan Marriott, PhD of Bioscience Writers, LLC.

The following topics will be covered:

  • Easing the Stress of Grant Writing by Taking Control of the Writing Process
  • Harnessing the Power of Peer Review
  • Engaging Reviewers wth an Exciting Hypothesis, Objective, or Goal
  • Writing Specific Aims that Work for You and Reviewers
  • Helping Reviewers Understand and Appreciate your Proposal

The workshop will be held at the OSU Health Sciences Library, Prior Hall, on June 5, 2018 in room 400 from 9:30 am - 12:30 pm. Light refreshments will be provided.

Applying for a grant? Are you wondering how grant applications are evaluated by the reviewers? Listen to grant reviewers talk about what they look for, scoring and more. Recent grant recipients will also be part of the discussion to talk about what made them successful in receiving the awards.

Panelists include:

  • Cynthia Sieck, PhD, MPH - Family Medicine - Grant Reviewer
  • Chris Taylor, PhD - School of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences - Grant Reviewer
  • Jill Heathcock, PhD - School of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences - Successful Grant Awardee
  • Sakima Smith, MD - Cardiovascular Medicine - Successful Grant Awardee

The discussion will be held June 7, 2018 from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm, followed by a Q&A from 12:00-12:30 pm, at the OSU Health Science Library, Prior Hall, Room 400.

This event is open to OSU Health Sciences faculty and staff, and is a collaboration between the OSU CCTS and the OSU Health Sciences Library.

OSU CCTS' Community Engagement Program Manager, Jeff Grever, recently attended a training seminar for conducting Community Engagement Studios, a consultative session for researchers interested in getting input on their work from patients, caregivers, health care providers, community members and other non-researcher stakeholders

Community engagement program staff from various CTSA-funded institutions attended the two-day seminar this month in Irvine, CA hosted by UC Irvine’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Science .

Pictured is Yvonne Joosten, MPH, Executive Director for the Office of Community Engagement at the Vanderbilt Institute for Medicine and Public Health, as she leads the hands-on demonstration.

The OSU CCTS, in coordination with the Department of Biomedical Informatics (BMI), is sponsoring a focused series on the topic of Research Electronic Data Capture (EDC) Tools and Methods. These monthly training sessions are held in room 240 of the Prior Health Science Library and via WebEx.

Interested in attending? Here is an upcoming session:

Specialized Topic Training
Wednesday, June 27
10:00 - 11:00 am

For further information, please contact Amy Drake.
Nationwide Children’s Hospital has become home to the most innovative clinical trials in the nation, and oftentimes, globally. In an effort to create an intellectual community to foster compliance and lower institutional risk, NCH is offering an expanded clinical research course series on a variety of topics. Individuals completing all sessions will receive a certificate of Clinical Research Competency.

Courses will be held in the main Clinical Research Conference Room located on the 6 th  floor of the Tower building (T 6220) unless otherwise noted, and are eligible for CE credits with ACRP or SoCRA.

For more information on 2018 courses, dates offered, and registration, please visit  the ANCHOR website (this is a NCH Internal Site) for the Clinical Research Competency Series.
If you are thinking about your next research project, we encourage you to schedule a research funding consult and learn how to use SPIN, an extensive research funding opportunity database. SPIN contains over 40,000 opportunities from more than 10,000 sponsors. With SPIN, you will learn how to:
 
  • Create and save customized searches that generate daily email funding alerts
  • Organize and share funding announcements with colleagues
  • Access an extensive Keyword list, allowing for greater flexibility in your searches
  • Quickly locate Federal or non-Federal programs
  • Locate all types of funding information, e.g., travel grants, fellowships, and other sponsored programs
 
All Ohio State faculty, staff, and students are able to create an account in SPIN. Please visit  http://go.osu.edu/funding  for step-by-step instructions.
For years researchers have used the  Matchmaker   feature in  NIH RePORTER  to identify NIH-funded projects similar to their supplied abstracts, research bios, or other scientific text. Matchmaker was recently enhanced to make it just as easy to identify NIH program officials whose portfolios include projects in your research area.

After entering your scientific text (up to 15,000 characters), Matchmaker will analyze the key terms and concepts to identify up to 500 similar projects. Those projects will continue to show on the Projects tab with handy charts to visualize the results and quickly filter identified projects by Institute/Center, Activity Code, and Study Section. A new Program Official tab identifies the program officials associated with the matched projects and includes its own filters for Institute/Center and Activity Code. From the list of program officials you are one click away from their contact information and matched projects in their portfolios. Never before has it been so easy to answer the question “Who at NIH can I talk to about my research?”

You're invited!

The FAMEPRO Grand Rounds is the culmination of the year-long clinical scholarship competition, featuring the presentations of the top three original projects of the 2017-2018 FAMEPRO program. The presentations will be judged on site and awards given. This year’s projects feature clinical research from a wide variety of disciplines and research methodologies, in collaboration with the CCTS and the Department of Internal Medicine.

Thursday, June 21
7:30 am - 8:30 am
Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute, Room 170

Faculty profiles share the personal and professional stories of senior faculty members as an opportunity for other faculty members to glean insights and make connections. Robert Baiocchi, MD, PhD is Associate Professor of Internal Medicine (Hematology), and the department's Director of the Physician Scientist Training Program. Lunch Provided. Register by June 4.

Wednesday, June 6
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
105 Biomedical Research Tower

Aligns to FAME Competencies: Career Mentoring, Organizational Awareness, Professional Ethics

The OSU Office of Research provides a campus-wide subscription to an excellent newsletter on Research Grantwriting News. Writers are experts in research/proposal development and this resource should be required reading for anyone preparing a grant proposal. Recommendations are especially helpful to those who are new to grant writing or want to enhance their grantsmanship skills.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced an  Interim Final Rule That Delays Both the Effective Date and General Compliance Date of the Revisions to the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects  (the Common Rule) for a minimum of six months with future delay possible.

The Regulatory Guidance for Academic Research of Drugs and Devices (ReGARDD) Program offers an innovative and organized platform in which regulatory expertise can be shared across academic intuitions. ReGARDD provides academic researchers with the regulatory tools and resources necessary to successfully navigate the pathway from discovery to clinical implementation of new drugs, biologics and medical devices. We use a two-pronged approach:
 
  • A shared CTSA website that is comprised of helpful tools, templates, decision trees, and educational resources to support academic investigators’ regulatory needs,
  • A regional forum of regulatory experts from the four institutions involved in the program. The role of the forum is to strengthen the regulatory affairs workforce at each institution by providing exposure to a broad array of regulatory knowledge and a platform to share best practices, and discuss complex regulatory issues.

The ReGARDD program is a collaboration between the regulatory affairs specialists from North Carolina Institutions that receive funding from the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program. These CTSA hub institutions are the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and partner RTI International, Duke University, and the Wake Forest School of Medicine.
 
The BD2K Training Coordinating Center is organizing an Innovation Lab to foster the development of new interdisciplinary teams via a facilitated and mentored format to tackle the technology and mathematical challenges which are creating roadblocks in utilization of single cell multimodal data acquisition, compatibility, and its wider integration.

The Innovation Lab process entails participation in an intensive five-day residential workshop facilitating the development of new early-career biomedical and quantitative investigator teams that will generate multidisciplinary cooperative research programs through a real-time and iterative mentoring process.

The lab will be held June 25 - 29, 2018.

Save the Date: ATRN Summit
Save the date for the seventh annual Appalachian Translational Research Network Summit on September 20 and 21, 2018 at the University of Kentucky.

Last year's ATRN Summit, held at Pennsylvania State University, focused on identifying new areas of research and collaboration to help with addressing the significant health challenges and disparities to Appalachia. ATRN institution members had an opportunity to share best practices in the area of community engagement and new and exciting research projects in Appalachia.

If you are interested in becoming an individual member of the ATRN or would like to receive updates and registration information for next year's summit, please contact Jeff Grever.
NCATS seeks scientific investigators from the NIH intramural and extramural communities, as well as those from the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, to collaborate on projects through its Stem Cell Translation Laboratory (SCTL). The next proposal deadline is July 1, 2018.
 
The SCTL is a state-of-the-art research facility designed to address the scientific and technological challenges in the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) field. NCATS’ dynamic multidisciplinary staff apply their diverse scientific expertise to iPSC characterization and utilization.

The NIH announces this year’s Lasker Clinical Research Scholars Program. This is a competitive opportunity for early-stage physician-scientists to conduct independent clinical and translational research as tenure-track investigators at the NIH and in academia. It was established in 2011 to create career research opportunities for physician-scientists (it also includes dental and nurse scientists) and is targeted to outstanding post-fellowship physicians and other clinicians with strong research interests and credentials.

Funding provides full research and salary support for 5+ years at the NIH followed by three years in academia (up to $500,000/year) or continued appointment in the NIH intramural program. This program also allows for the opportunity for academic institutional affiliation while at the NIH. The deadline for applications is  August 31, 2018 . The general start date for the positions is summer 2019, but this is flexible. More information can be found at our website or by email to Dr. Chuck Dearolf .
The Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) is committed to advancing infectious diseases and microbiology research. IDI seed grants are intended to foster interdisciplinary collaborative efforts and to enhance competitiveness for defined extramural support.

Funding provided by IDI should be thought of as a “venture capital initiative,” invested for the purposes of growth and return on investment (ROI). Therefore, it is important that requests provide sufficient rationale and evidence for the strong probability of success in near-future extramural funding applications and clearly articulate how funding will benefit the efforts of the IDI. 

The OSU CCTS is excited to announce that The OSU Office of Research’s CarmenWiki listing of all internal funding opportunities has been updated with a new column titled “ Includes Human Health ”. Thanks to Jeff Agnoli and his team, this resource will now help translational scientists to quickly find grants that are applicable to human health.

Funding Opportunities from the NIH.

Read about the latest translational science news, opportunities, and announcements in the latest edition of the NCATS e-Newsletter and the NIH's Weekly Funding Notice.



Learn more about PCORI through their blog, video room, news releases, and other resources.

Discover the latest news in translational science and grant opportunities from the Association for Clinical and Translational Science's monthly newsletter. 

When you sign up as a member of the OSU CCTS, you are entitled to become a member of The Association for Clinical and Translational Science at no cost .

As a member of the ACTS, you have access to a wide variety of benefits and tools to assist you with your research. These benefits include:

  • Discounted registration for the Translational Science Meeting
  • Email updates and web access to relevant translational science topics
  • Access to the ACTS newsletter, the ACTS Connection
  • Access to articles in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science, published by Cambridge University Press
  • Opportunities for development and participation in committees and special interest groups