Participating Institutions
Photo: Dianna Milewicz, M.D., Ph.D., professor and director of medical genetics at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, directs research in the Genetics Core Lab. The lab will help facilitate more rapid research results at UT-Houston's Center for Clinical and Translations Sciences. (Photo by Ester Fant, courtesy of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston)
University of Texas Houston Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences
Houston, TX
Visit SitePrincipal Investigator: David Dugald McPherson, M.D.
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHSC-H) proposes to establish a Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS) at the Texas Medical Center (TMC) in Houston. Participating faculty and trainees in the CCTS will include those from the UTHSC-H component degree-granting schools, including its Medical School, School of Public Health, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, School of Health Information Sciences, School of Nursing, Dental Branch, and Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM), as well as collaborating faculty/facilities The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC), which also is located in the TMC. The academic "home" for the CCTS will be in 11,422 square feet of newly renovated space at the UT Medical School, which is physically joined to Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center and serves as its partner and primary teaching hospital. The CCTS "home" will administer all aspects of the CCTS; and provide space and resources for faculty and trainees, along with expertise in study design, biostatistics, regulatory issues, ethics, bioinformatics, funding of pilot and feasibility studies, provision of resources, protected time for clinical and translational faculty and trainees, and interactions/collaborations with the various communities and industry. For participant and clinical interactions resources (PCIR), the CCTS will subsume the UTHSC-H General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) at Memorial Hermann, the satellite UTHSC-H GCRC at Brownsville, Texas, and, in part, the MDACC Clinical and Translational Research Center, to enhance research productivity and efficiency. In its educational component, the CCTS will subsume, in part, the current Center for Clinical Research and Evidence-Based Medicine, which has developed and currently provides formal classes, mentoring, and a Master of Clinical Research (MCR) degree at UTHSC-H, and an active NCRR K30 award at MDACC. Also proposed in the application is a novel T32 application offering combinations of master's and doctoral degrees in community health sciences, biomedical sciences and/or biomedical informatics—primarily for pre-doctoral students—and a K12 application for post-doctoral trainees and junior faculty. The CCTS also will subsume core translational laboratories, including a genotyping/sequencing core, a biomarkers core offering DNA microarray, RT-PCR and proteomics services, an immune monitoring core, an MRI core, and a biobanking core. A CCTS "think tank" composed of highly accomplished translational and clinical investigators, basic scientists and educators, and community representatives, will come together as an "engine for innovation" to bring forward and recommend the application of novel and emerging scientific information, methods, and technologies to research into human health and diseases across specialties, disciplines, and communities