APRIL 2012

Cutting Edge Imaging Center

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The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) established the Center for Biomedical Imaging (CBI) in the fall of 2010. This center’s director is Dr. Joseph A. Helpern, Vice Chair for Research in Radiology and Smart State Endowed Chair in Brain Imaging.

Dr. Helpern is a world-renowned imaging scientist and recipient of numerous awards, patents, and National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants. Helpern moved from New York University School of Medicine where he led similar efforts as founding director of their Center for Biomedical Imaging.

“The advancement of imaging technology shows no signs of slowing down. It is a ubiquitous technology in research and in the

practice of medicine,” said Helpern. Imaging research can be applied to almost all areas of medicine including neurology, psychiatry, radiology, orthopedics, cardiac and rehabilitative medicine.

CBI provides state-of-the-art imaging resources to support clinical and research activities, provide opportunities to advance the imaging field, disseminate new technologies and approaches to the larger community, and train and mentor young investigators interested in developing and applying biomedical imaging to clinical and research problems.

The center’s primary mission is to maximize the impact of imaging at MUSC by providing leadership and infrastructure that enables the university to address local and national priorities. They also intend to develop regional and national collaborations that strengthen capabilities and enhance the university’s image. In addition, the effort provides opportunities for basic and clinical scientists to collaborate and discover new ways to study diseases and disease processes, to develop and apply this knowledge to clinically relevant research, and to translate advances to the community.

Joining Helpern in guiding MUSC imaging research efforts is Dr. Truman R. Brown, Professor of Radiology, who serves as scientific director of the CBI.

Research INKlings

Inside this Issue

P2 Center for Biomedical Imaging (CBI)

P2 New Research Website

P2 Clinical Data Warehouse

P3 Services, Pricing & Applications for Research Center (SPARC)

P3 NIH News

P3 Authorship Guidelines Comments Accepted

P4 Research Project Grant (RPG) Retreat

P4 COS introduces Pivot

Research INKlings is an on-line monthly newsletter prepared by the Office of Research Development providing research news, policy changes and other relevant information for MUSC faculty, staff and students.

Research Inklings Page 2

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Recruited from Columbia University, Brown has several patents in magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging, which has helped advance the field especially in the study of cancer. To help establish a critical mass of experts on campus, both Helpern and Brown have been busy recruiting imaging scientists while enriching the Department of Radiology’s NIH research grant portfolio.

The CBI includes approximately 4500 square feet of space at 30 Bee Street, as well as approximately 6000 square feet in the new Bioengineering Building. The space at 30 Bee Street is the main facility for human imaging research, and houses a Siemens 3T TIM Trio MRI scanner equipped with integrated fMRI paradigm presentation equipment. The scanner operates with a 100% mandate for research use and is covered by a master research agreement with Siemens Medical.

The site also contains an image analysis laboratory and bioengineering facility along with subject interview and changing rooms. Researchers also have access to clinical Siemens 1.5T and 3T Verio MR scanners, located within the Radiology Department in the Clinical Sciences Building. Offices, wet and dry labs, classrooms, an auditorium, a Bruker 7T/30 animal MRI system, a bioluminescence imager, and a Siemens micro PET/CT scanner, are housed in the Bioengineering Building.

To learn more about the Center for Braining Imaging, please visit the website at http://academicdepartments.musc.edu/cbi/index.htm.

Navigating the New Research Website

The Medical University has introduced a new web template to provide a more cohesive look between the university and clinical websites. This design, which has been applied to the hospital, research and academic sites, is designed to improve navigation and help audiences clearly understand that they are visiting an MUSC website. In keeping with the new design, the former Research websites, “Research and Discovery” and “Research Support Resources”, have been collapsed into one site that will offer information for both public audiences and internal MUSC faculty, staff, and students. Specific research administration units are accessed from the left-hand column links. Direct links to research proposal application systems, databases, and reports are available from the “Research Resources” link. The “Quick Links” section offers additional access to information, reports, and systems that are routinely used in the MUSC research environment. The design of the new site was based on ease of use, quick access, most visited links, and recommendations from users across campus.

CBI Continued

Clinical Data Warehouse

MUSC faculty and faculty-sponsored staff now have access to the Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW) for research. The CDW is a single, secure, integrated database extracted from the MUSC OACIS Clinical Data Repository, which includes patient demographics, ICD-coded diagnoses, ICD-coded procedures, medications, and laboratory test results.

The CDW will provide clear pathways for data requests with full regulatory compliance and accelerate our translational research programs that will lead to new diagnostic tools and therapies for a range of diseases. More information is available at https://sctr.musc.edu/index.php/research-tools/clinical-data-warehouse.”

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The National Institutes of Health and Eli Lilly and Company will generate a publicly available resource to profile the effects of thousands of approved and investigational medicines in a variety of sophisticated disease-relevant testing systems.

Comprehensive knowledge of the biological profiles of these medicines and molecules may enable biomedical researchers to better predict treatment outcomes, improve drug development, and lead to more specific and effective approaches.

Through the collaboration, the NIH's newly established National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and Lilly Research Laboratories have agreed that NCATS’ Pharmaceutical Collection of 3,800 approved and investigational medicines will be screened using Lilly’s state-of-the-art Phenotypic Drug Discovery (PD2) panel.

"This innovative collaboration with Lilly is exactly the type of partnership that NCATS is eager to foster with many other groups from industry, government and academia," said NCATS Acting Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. "Working together, we can make drug development pipelines

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more productive. The key is precompetitive collaboration to benefit all partners, ensuring broad access to the results."

The NCATS Pharmaceutical Collection (NPC) is a comprehensive, publicly available database and is a physical sample collection. The PD2 assay panel, part of Lilly's Open Innovation Drug Discovery platform, consists of sophisticated human disease pathway-related assays relevant to cardiovascular diseases, cancer and endocrine disorders, among others. These testing systems are designed to reveal novel mechanisms or pathway activities of drugs.

In addition, NIH announces the posting of a web-based tutorial applicable to the 2011 revised regulation on Promoting Objectivity in Research for all NIH-supported Institutions. The tutorial focuses on the main requirements of the Financial Conflict of Interest (FCOI) regulation applicable to grants and cooperative agreements. The tutorial may be accessed on the Office of Extramural Research, Financial Conflict of Interest web page under “Resources” at: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/coi/index.htm.

Services, Pricing & Applications for Research Center (SPARC) is now Live!

SPARC is a web-based system that

provides a one-stop-shop to researchers

and their study teams to browse

available services and submit service

and pricing requests to research service

providers across the MUSC campus

with a focus on billing compliance and

proposal and budget development.

SPARC will ultimately include various

UMA and University service providers

on campus whose services will be

phased into SPARC throughout the

year. Future upgrades will also include

work fulfillment data collection,

invoicing and billing features, and

outcome metrics using grant and

publication data.

Should you need any assistance or like

to set up training, please contact the

SUCCESS Center at

success@musc.edu or 792.8300.

The SCTR SUCCESS Center,

Biomedical Informatics, Marketing, and

Project Management SPARC Team

would like to thank the many people

across the MUSC Enterprise who

contributed to this project.

Authorship Guidelines Comments Accepted

Please review the new Authorship Guidelines: Principles, Communication, and Dispute Resolution document. This document is intended to provide guidance on authorship and procedures for avoiding and resolving authorship disputes. These guidelines apply to all types of print and electronic publications, for example, full articles, abstracts, technical notes as well as oral and poster presentations. Please direct any suggestions or comments to Dr. Lynn M. Veatch (veatchlm@musc.edu).

NIH News Eli Lilly & Company, Web Tutorial

Research inklings April 2012

On March 7, 2012, the Office of Research Development hosted its Research Project Grant (RPG) Retreat. These are interactive half-day sessions that give individual investigators the opportunity to gain constructive criticism on a specific research concept or proposal. These retreats also provide an objective review and suggestions for competitive research proposals that will be submitted to NIH or another peer-review sponsor.

The outline for the March Research Retreat included three presentations, each lasting no more than 20 minutes, followed by 25 minutes of critique and discussion with review panelists and audience members. Dr. Houjian Cai, a Research Assistant Professor from the Department of Medicine presented his research focusing on “Targeting myristoylation of Src family kinases for inhibition of prostate tumorigenesis (R01),” followed by Dr. Chrystal Paulos, Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Department of Surgery. Dr. Paulos presented, “Targeting the ICOS/ICOSL pathway to augment antitumor-specific Th17 cells (R01).” The third presenter was Dr. Robert M. Gemmill, Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology. He reviewed his project, “Interactions & functions of the TRC8 E3 ubiquitin ligase in lipid and protein biosynthesis (R01).”

These sessions “mimic” the NIH study sections with a primary reviewer providing a description of the proposal and critique of the strengths and limitations. Also, a biostatistician evaluated each presentation to ensure the proposal included a sound statistical plan. A statistical plan is a fundamental component to any NIH proposal to reproducible science, whether laboratory-based, translational, patient-oriented or randomized clinical trials.

The Retreat review panel consisted of four senior investigator-mentors with peer review experience and a broad grasp of contemporary basic, translational and/or clinical biomedical or bio-behavioral research. With special recognition, the Office of Research Development would like to express our appreciation to the review panel:

Dr. Dhan Kuppuswamy, Associate Professor, Medicine/Cardiology Dr. Carola A. Neumann, Assistant Professor, Cell/Molecular Pharmacology

and Experimental Therapeutics Dr. Dennis K. Watson, Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Dr. Viswanathan Ramakrishnan, Professor, Biostatistics and Epidemiology

For more information regarding upcoming retreats, please visit the website at http://academicdepartments.musc.edu/research/ord/retreats_workshops/.

Research Project Grant (RPG) Retreat

Dr. Houjian Cai

Dr. Chrystal Paulos

Dr. Robert Gemmill