As our CTSC enters the next grant period, we would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the past five years and share some of our successes and accomplishments. Since our program was first funded in October 2007, our CTSC has integrated our 11 core services and added five service cores across five partner institutions, as well as the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and the National Center for Regenerative Medicine. Since 2007, we have supported more than 400 projects.  During this period, federal grant dollars classified as "clinical/translational" increased by 28 percent, and our faculty secured more than $51.4M in grants for community-related projects.

Our Clinical Research Unit Services (CRUS) provided support to an impressive 23 percent of all NIH grants in the Collaborative. Highly trained personnel carry out research protocols in the hospital, in outpatient medical centers and in other fixed and ad hoc community settings, and have made a culturally sensitive and welcoming clinical environment for volunteer research participants. Information acquired through the CRUS has contributed to more than 400 papers by investigators.

Our Pilot Programs provide impetus for all stages of Clinical and Translational research. These programs emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaborations. Throughout the past five years we have utilized the Pilot Grant Program to help identify mentors for new investigators. We have awarded 55 percent of CTSC Pilot awards to new investigators and 83 percent of the awards went to inter-disciplinary or inter-institutional collaborative teams. The data from the Pilot Grants resulted in $6.5M in new grants to investigators from all partner institutions.  For the next grant period, the partner institutions have contributed significantly more funds to the pilot program, and we expect to continue to foster collaborations and the careers of junior and senior investigators, as well as offering Themed Pilot Grants in areas of high priority for the CTSC.

The development of an electronic front door to the Research Concierge Service (RCS) has given researchers the opportunity to obtain the answers to questions about CTSC services. The RCS can match research needs to core services, help inexperienced researchers navigate the details of planning a study, assist with data design, and identify useful tools.

Our research scholar training program aims to prepare a multidisciplinary group of clinical research scholars to be future leaders of the nation's clinical research enterprise. Our program has created several special projects and innovations including: a MS program in clinical investigation with a PhD program under development, a certificate in clinical investigation, a novel mentoring academy, emphasis on developing and maintaining interdisciplinary teams, interdisciplinary scholar seminars and more. Scholars have come from across the Collaborative: 14 from Cleveland Clinic, 11 from Case Western Reserve University, 7 from University Hospitals Case Medical Center and 4 from MetroHealth Medical Center.  About half are physicians, the rest nurses, engineers, dentists, and other professionals. They came from a broad array of disciplines including: Medicine, Neurobiology, Bioethics, Clinical Psychology, Radiology, Pathology, Nursing, Dermatology, Nephrology, Materials Science Engineering, Gastroenterology, Interventional Cardiology and Pulmonary Medicine.

Members of the CTSC have also developed eight clinical informatics tools that are now available to members. We aided in disseminating new technologies and practices to the National CTSA community and expanded Clinical Research Informatics education and training programs. The Cleveland Clinic invented, commercialized, sold, and deployed the Explorys, Inc. informatics tool to all of our partner institutions. This system is an in-house incubated startup providing a sustainable clinical data warehouse business model. Our CTSA also played a key role in the dissemination of informatics software developed elsewhere in the CTSA program, such as REDCap, a data capture tool from Vanderbilt University.

Our CTSC received an outstanding renewal score and our accomplishments were termed "daunting" by the External Advisory Board. We are tremendously proud of our CTSC investigators and community and look forward to the progress we are sure to make in the years to come. We thank all of those who have helped us achieve such great success. 

Pamela B. Davis, M.D., PhD.

Richard Rudick, M.D.   

The new ID numbers from NCATS for the CTSC award are: 

2UL1TR000439