Dartmouth Cystic Fibrosis Training Program

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In this application, we propose continued funding to the Dartmouth Cystic Fibrosis Training Program (DCFTP). Continuing support is sought for a comprehensive, highly interactive, interdepartmental training program with an emphasis on CF basic and translational science. The overall philosophy of the program is to use a disease-centered approach to teach fundamental concepts of basic and translational science in the context of a dynamic, multidisciplinary research and team-based mentoring environment. In this submission, we propose to directly fund 4 Trainees annually. Our program has pooled the talents of 22 dedicated Faculty Trainers from a wide range of departments—our current program includes faculty in the departments of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chemistry, Molecular Systems Biology, Medicine, Microbiology/ Immunology, Epidemiology, Pediatrics, and Engineering—to provide instruction in CF-related research to PhD and MD/PhD students. The DCFTP will function in the context of a Research Base already rich in basic, translational, and clinical CF-related studies. The CF research program at Dartmouth has grown from three investigators and one NIH grant in 1997 to a community of world-class scientists that currently secure $21.1M per year in direct costs of research funding ($0.96M per investigator average). Dartmouth will also provide ~$39.6M in institutional support, including direct support to DartCF, our training program and the affiliated graduate programs, over the next 5 years. Our Training Faculty use approaches including the study of clinical cohorts, quantitative methods, and laboratory-based and animal studies; thus, our trainees are exposed to a broad range of scientific strategies to answer impactful scientific questions. The DCFTP participating Training Faculty, which include PhD, MD, and MD/PhD researchers, work in a range of disciplines, with CF research as the central focus; all Training Faculty conduct research, are well funded, and teach and mentor our Trainees. This group of basic and physician-scientist researchers is actively engaged in CF-related research, with expertise in cell biology, structural biology, microbiology, immunology, microbiome, genetics, bioinformatics, statistics, and proteomics. A hallmark of our program is the close and consistent interaction of our Training Faculty with our DCFTP Trainees via DCFTP-sponsored general and Trainee-specific activities, including weekly research meetings, courses, journal clubs, and our annual retreat. Training-grant funds and DCFTP- sponsored, Trainee-specific enhanced activities provide a unifying base that greatly facilitates the strikingly interactive nature of this group (evidenced by 38 collaborative publications over the past ~5 years among our 22 Training and 9 Affiliated Faculty) and of the collaborative grants held by these faculty.