General Clinical Research Center

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DESCRIPTION (Provided by Applicant): The University of Maryland (UM) School of Medicine has experienced remarkable growth in research funding in recent years, totaling $341 million in the current year. As part of the institution's commitment to maintaining and expanding infrastructure to facilitate high-quality clinical and translational research, we established a General Clinical Research Center in the University of Maryland Medical Center in 2002. The goal of the GCRC is to provide medical scientists with a setting and resources for clinical research that will ensure that research and training will be of the highest quality. This Center has been a remarkable asset to UM. The GCRC has consolidated a previously fragmented clinical research enterprise and produced an institution-wide cultural change toward shared resources and higher standards of research. In its first four years, the GCRC has supported protocols representing a wide range of disciplines within the School of Medicine and the Schools of Dentistry and Pharmacy. The GCRC facilities are essential to the conduct of numerous projects, including projects requiring an isolation ward for testing infectious agents and live vaccine candidates. Projects that could not have been done five years ago are now possible with the clinical resources of the GCRC. The availability of Biostatistical and Biolnformatics Cores is widely exploited by GCRC investigators and has contributed to the quality and management of innumerable studies. The GCRC-supported Genomics Core Facility has become a heavily subscribed core resource for multiple investigators who wish to explore the genetic basis of disease or the genetics of pathogenic bacteria. The GCRC Research Subject Advocate is highly regarded as a resource for consultation about the ethics and logistics of study conduct. The GCRC has become a focus for training in the clinical research on campus. The University of Maryland's K30 award for Clinical Research Curriculum Development and its Roadmap K12 award for Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Career Development are inextricably integrated with the GCRC. In this renewal, using cost-saving measures and institutional support, we have requested no overall increase in budget beyond a 3% increase for inflation for a 3-year period. During the upcoming grant period, we anticipate the planning and funding of the UM Clinical and Translational Science Center.