Immunobiology of Trauma

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This T32 grant, GM86308, Immunobiology of Trauma will provide the appropriate training and mentoring to create the next generation of physician scientists. Physician-scientists are a critical element of the workforce necessary to improve the health of patients. Injuries and deaths from traumatic injury represented the major cause of death and impaired function among people under the age of 44. This morbidity and mortality creates a disproportionate drain on healthcare resources due to the typical young age of the trauma patient. Additionally, new advances in identifying the scope of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (football players’ brain injury) show the need for increased investment in the basic science of trauma. Trauma disproportionately affects underserved minority patients resulting in healthcare disparities further emphasizing the role trauma plays in the health of our country. This revision of our competing renewal will build on the success of the prior five years of funding. These successes include effective recruitment of minority physicians into the program, 6 national awards to our T32 fellows, and 23 papers either published or in press. Since the original renewal submission in 2015 an additional 11 papers have been published or are in press. There are important innovations in this competing renewal which developing new evaluation tools developed by the recently funded BU Clinical Science and Translational Institute and a newly NIH funded mentoring program for minority students, among others. Some of the significant changes in the new application include a restructuring of the executive committee to include members with active funding and labs, development of clear training objectives, and expansion of the training faculty to include investigators focusing on traumatic brain injury. This grant specifically requests funding for two postdoctoral fellows for two years of training, a formula which has proven successful during the prior funding. The Executive Committee works closely with the individual trainees to identify labs whose research matches the interests of the trainees. All of our prior trainees have been drawn from the residency programs at Boston Medical Center, the largest safety net hospital in New England. There is exceptional institutional commitment manifest by the support for the recruitment and retention of minority physicians and trainees with disabilities. It should be noted that only one of our 10 trainees has completed their clinical training, and it is not possible to document successful physician scientists completing our program. However, we have prepared our trainees for academic careers by mentoring their science such that they have already been successful as documented by the numerous national awards and published multiple manuscripts in the peer reviewed literature.