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Collaborative Grants 
Collaborative Grants in Action
| Clinical and Translational Science At CUMC: One Year Later |
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The NIH conceived the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs), as the grants are called, with three main goals in mind. It wanted to spur the development of novel treatments and ways to speed them to clinicians who could then administer them to the patient community. It wanted to provide seed money for pilot and collaborative studies that draw on the knowledge and techniques of several disciplines at once. And it was determined to promote greater use of biomedical informatics to link researchers electronically with colleagues at their home institutions and elsewhere in the national consortium. All three objectives reflect the ideals set forth in the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, a series of initiatives intended to improve health and prevent disease.
The CSTA’s base at Columbia is the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. Formerly the Irving Center for Clinical Research, the Institute has a greatly expanded membership and mission. Occupying the entire 10th floor of the Harkness Pavilion and NewYork-Presbyterian, it now extends across the CUMC campus, in some cases onto Morningside, and beyond. Its administrative offices, Biomarkers Core Lab, and inpatient and outpatient facilities were built in 1987 with a gift from Florence and Herbert Irving, who also set up a permanent endowment that year to honor and recognize their personal physicians by establishing incentives for young physician-investigators to embark on clinical research careers.
Under the direction of Henry Ginsberg, M.D., Irving Professor of Medicine, associate dean of clinical and translational research, and PI of the CTSA grant, the Institute has begun to travel along a new path. “Our overriding goal is to increase translational research by training and supporting young investigators interested in conducting such research,” Dr. Ginsberg says. “A connected goal is to broaden the expertise of both preclinical and clinical investigators, by introducing preclinical scientists to the art of clinical research and vice versa. And, we want to change the way our scientists approach their research, to get them thinking about multidisciplinary, collaborative approaches to a problem before they start their studies rather than after they complete some work.”
Earlier this month, the Institute funded four, $25,000, six-month planning grants for collaborative research projects, two of which will be chosen to receive an additional $125,000 for year-long pilot studies. (See sidebar below) In conjunction with Columbia’s Clinical Trials Office, it also distributed 16 one-time, one-year Clinical and Translational Pilot Grants to individual junior faculty in the amount of $50,000 each.
The Institute also is developing educational training programs in multidisciplinary research. Melissa Begg, Sc.D, professor of clinical biostatistics at the Mailman School of Public Health and co-PI, put together a curriculum for a 30-credit master’s degree in collaborative research. Karina Davidson, Ph.D., co-director of
the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health and one of four associate directors of the Irving Institute, is developing a pre-doctoral training certificate program in multidisciplinary patient-oriented research. This November the Institute will host its first in a series of bi-monthly, campus-wide seminars on clinical and translational issues.
The 10 key resources for investigators to draw on and which comprise the Irving Institute, range from developing novel methodologies to biostatistics and design to tracking and evaluation. Descriptions of these resources appear on the Institute’s new Web site: http://irvinginstitute.columbia.edu/index.html.
What’s next for the Institute? Dealing with cuts in NIH funding of about 3 percent a year for the next few years, for one thing. Dr. Ginsberg expects the Institute to survive the cuts. “Because of outstanding support from Columbia, including the Irving endowment, which is now more than $28 million, we will be better able to deal with the projected reductions than many other CTSAs,” he says.
Another item on next year’s agenda is renting a storefront or a similar site in Washington Heights where investigators can meet with community members, train community researchers, and conduct studies. “The Community Engagement Resource is a critical piece of the CTSA, linking the campus to the community,” Dr. Ginsberg says. “Having a center outside of the hospital campus is critical to the CTSA’s success.”
—Eric Oatman
