KY IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence

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The Kentucky INBRE serves a statewide mission to build infrastructure and capacity for biomedical and health-related research and training as well as for bioinformatics. In this application, the University of Louisville is partnered with the University of Kentucky, Berea College, Eastern Kentucky University, Morehead State University, Northern Kentucky University and Western Kentucky University to continue the development of our collaborative network. The goals of our network are to build competitive research and training programs in the biomedical and health sciences, particularly in the fields of genomics and neuroscience, as well as to build competitive bioinformatics programs. These efforts will lead to improved prospects for career development for our undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young faculty investigators. In this application, we propose mechanisms to sustain as well as grow the competitive research component of this program as this aspect is viewed as critical to the establishment of our training and career development activities. This will include support for teaching-postdoctoral fellows and research associates for existing investigators, program support for new research investigators, and for the initiation of new developmental research projects. For bioinformatics, we aim to support projects with the potential for development as competitive independent, and/or collaborative, proposals. To enhance the career development aspects for faculty, postdoctoral fellows and prospective researchers in our program we will develop a mentoring team of proven investigators to provide workshops on grant writing skills and disseminate materials related to best practices. We intend to continue partial funding of our centralized microarray facility which is essential to the development of genomics-based research projects at this and other institutions, and we will continue to develop initiatives in aid of our growing proteomics research base. We propose to establish a new, community-based participatory research core. As a first step, this core will establish web-accessible de-identified electronic health records for health care organizations in rural Kentucky. Health information gained from this activity will be used to inform the future development of our undergraduate and graduate curriculum content and our biomedical research goals. The infrastructure will also be used to enable the patient community to indicate their interest in participating in relevant clinical research trials. In summary, our strategy is designed to strengthen and build our infrastructure and capacity and to build an innovative next generation network.