General Clinical Research Center

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The GCRC at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and the satellite GCRC at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center are applying for continued funding of the GCRCs for 5 years (12/01/2006 to 11/30/2011). The Harbor-UCLA GCRC is requesting support for an inpatient unit (800 days), outpatient facilities (9,000 visits), a perinatal/ pediatrics unit (7,000 hrs). The Cedars GCRC satellite is seeking continued support for an outpatient unit, a complex genotype-phenotype core and a perinatal unit working closely with its Harbor counterpart. The current application contains 93 protocols from Harbor and 95 from Cedars, each with Data Safety Monitoring plans. The GCRCs are requesting support for a new joint Clinjcal Transcriptional Genomics, Proteomics and Molecular Cytology core with 47 protocols utilizing this proposed core. Reviewed and given an excellent score, this core was not funded in 2004 because of NCRR's budgetary constraints. Similar to the GCRC parent grant, the core's strengths include outstanding qualifications of the investigators-core directors, the capability to provide a training environment, and a substantial number of investigators and protocols from a broad range of disciplines. Our institutions have generously provided major equipment in the past 2 years and provided interim support for personnel to run the proposed core. Our presented proto-cols demonstrate the broad base of our well-funded investigators with diverse research including emerging infections, chronic kidney disease, fibroblasts in autoimmunity, male reproduction, neurotrauma, skeletal dysplasia and inflammatory bowel disease. We support high-volume outpatient studies (SELECT, Nutrition and Kidney Disease), high-intensity inpatient studies (Phase I safety and pharmacokihetics studies, metabolic and multiple sample studies), perinatal research (reproductive toxicology, methamphetamine exposed babies), behavior studies (depression, alcohol dependence), and genetics of common diseases (diabetes, diabetic nephropathy, osteoporosis, atherosclerosis). The GCRCs are the focus of clinical research training in their respective institutions reaching out to junior faculty, fellows, and minority graduate and undergraduate students, and our training activity is ranked "outstanding" in our last review. The GCRCs are positioned to be part of Centers for Clinical and Translational Sciences in our institutions following the NIH Roadmap to reengineer the clinical research enterprise of academic health centers in the nation.