CTSA

Translational Technologies and Resources Program

The Translational Technologies and Resources Program is a part of the Cleveland Clinical and Translational Science Awards.

The overall goal of the Translational Technologies and Resources Program (TTR) in the CTSA is to make expensive "high end" research technologies available to the clinical/translational investigator in a manner that facilitates access and maximizes successful utilization. Secondary goals are:

1. to provide education and training in these technologies (via development of specific programs within the TTR and through collaboration with the CTSA Education and Training Program) to clinical/translational researchers so that they understand the basic concepts of modern research tools, their strengths and weaknesses, and their specific applications; and
2. to develop novel extensions and applications of these technologies and resources for translational research.

The key principles underlying the TTR project are that clinical/translational researchers need access to both genotyping tools and comprehensive molecular and cellular phenotyping tools to characterize their clinical populations, understand mechanisms of responses to clinical research interventions, and discover molecular mechanisms underlying specific diseases. The TTR will provide tight linkages between core functions and the numerous bio-repositories that are being developed by the participating institutions in the CTSA. Thus, through the CTSA, an investigator is able to access high quality, archived human subject-derived materials (e.g. DNA, RNA, plasma, serum, urine, tissue blocks) from well defined clinical populations and use core technologies and expertise to ask specific questions that can be answered by individual cores and through cross-platform experimentation. In this manner the TTR serves to break down technology barriers facing clinical and translational investigators. For example, investigators utilizing animal model systems would use the TTR to enter the arena of clinical research by probing the frequency of a gene mutation/polymorphism or the expression of a specific gene, molecule, or pathway in a defined clinical population.

Mission & Vision

The TTR program of the CTSA will create a clinical research environment that encourages innovation and development of new technologies, will develop education and training programs that expose students, staff, physicians, and faculty to enabling technologies for clinical and translational research, will ensure that clinical and translational investigators have access to state-of-the-art facilities and assist them in choosing the appropriate experiments to address their questions, and will assist clinical investigators in developing HIPPA compliant repositories for human materials essential to the research mission. These goals will be accomplished through the following three Specific Aims:

1. Improve investigator access to multiple cores, enhance efficiency of core laboratories, and develop mechanisms to enable comparison of data across technological platforms.
2. Encourage development and adoption of new technologies within the CTSA.
3. Develop a detailed knowledge-base for developing Bio-repositories and provide a seamless, HIPAA compatible system for enhancing investigator access to fresh and stored human subjects materials via collaboration with the Participant and Clinical Interactions Resources Program.