The UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science (UMCCTS) has been awarded a seven-year, $50 million renewal of its Clinical and Translational Sciences Award, along with an associated K12 Scholar program, from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health.
The UMCCTS was founded in 2006 to enhance clinical and translational research across the five University of Massachusetts campuses and UMass Memorial Health. It has since expanded to include Baystate Health and Lahey Hospital & Medical Center. The consortium was funded by NIH in 2010, with grant renewals in 2015 and 2020.
Katherine Luzuriaga, MD, the UMass Memorial Health Care Chair in Biomedical Research , professor of molecular medicine, pediatrics and medicine, principal investigator and director of the UMCCTS and vice provost for research, said, “We’re grateful for the support from the NIH that has advanced collaboration across the five UMass campuses and our clinical partners. Each partner brings a different set of scientific or clinical expertise to transdisciplinary collaborations that have contributed to the innovation and impact resulting from the grant.”
“Collaboration is really the ethos of this grant. It’s all about figuring out how we can tackle hard problems with teams across several campuses and from different disciplines,” said Nate Hafer, PhD, associate professor of molecular medicine and director of operations for UMCCTS. We’re looking to get the right group of people together, whether it’s for training our undergrad and graduate students or working with community groups. It’s always about the idea of working together and asking how we can move forward together.”
Projects funded with this grant are programs that encourage and facilitate community participation in research, led by Stephenie Lemon, PhD, the Barbara Helen Smith Chair in Preventive & Behavioral Medicine , professor of population & quantitative health sciences and co-director of the Prevention Research Center; expand data aggregation, analytics and access to support a learning health system led by Adrian H. Zai, MD, PhD, MPH, associate professor of population & quantitative health sciences and chief research informatics officer; and the development of platforms incorporating data from wearable devices to advance the conduct of decentralized clinical trials, led by Apurv Soni, MD, PhD’21, assistant professor of medicine and co-director of the Program in Digital Medicine. Workforce development programs include the Bridging Engineering and Medicine program, led by Rachael Sirianni, PhD, professor and vice chair of neurological surgery; a clinical research professionals training program led by Jan Nissly, PhD, CTSA project director; and a health systems scholar program led by Allan Walkey, MD, MSc, professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Health Systems Science.
The UMCCTS will also continue its pilot funding program, which over the years has distributed roughly $9 million in pilot awards, with a return of $96 million in external funding for the research supported by the pilot awards. About 40 percent of the pilot awards have involved investigators from two or more UMass campuses or clinical partners.
According to Dr. Luzuriaga, an important component of the CTSA is the K12 Scholar program that supports new investigators as they transition from fellowship to independence. To date, the K12 Scholar program, led by Catarina Kiefe, MD, PhD, has supported 30 investigators who together have produced 1,126 publications and garnered $355 million in external funding.
“Altogether, the CTSA program enables investigators to better understand the mechanisms of disease and apply that knowledge, along with novel technologies, to developing new ways to prevent or treat those diseases,” Luzuriaga said. “The impact that we really hope to see over the lifetime of this award is improved health, not only in our local communities, but throughout the commonwealth and globally. The other impact we hope to achieve is to continue to develop the next generation of leaders in translational science, because that’s key to the sustainability of our efforts.”
About UMass Chan Medical School
UMass Chan Medical School, one of five campuses of the University of Massachusetts system, comprises the T.H. Chan School of Medicine; the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing; ForHealth Consulting at UMass Chan Medical School, a public service health care consulting division; and MassBiologics, the only nonprofit, FDA-licensed manufacturer of vaccines, biologics and viral vector gene therapies in the United States; and a thriving Nobel-Prize-winning biomedical research enterprise.
UMass Chan is advancing together to improve the health and wellness of our diverse communities throughout Massachusetts and across the world by leading and innovating in education, research, health care delivery and public service. UMass Chan has built a reputation as a world-class destination for biomedical research. It is ranked among the best medical schools in the nation for primary care education and biomedical research by U.S. News & World Report. In 2021, the Medical School received a $175 million gift from The Morningside Foundation and was renamed UMass Chan Medical School. Learn more at www.umassmed.edu .