ANTECEDANTS SEQUELAE OF CHILDHOOD ONSET DISEASE



 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a competitive renewal application for continued support of the Child Health Research Career Development Award (CHRCDA) Program in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW). UTSW and its Department of Pediatrics are ideally positioned to provide the supportive environment, the dedicated mentors, the critical core resources, and, most importantly, the stream of talented clinician-scientists that become the ultimate beneficiaries of this award. Our goal is to motivate and enable these young scientists to become the next generation of imaginative, independent, and sophisticated investigators focused on the diseases of major importance to infants and children throughout their lifetimes. We believe that our CHRCDA Program is uniquely qualified to accomplish this goal for the following reasons: 1) we have assembled a training faculty that offers enormous subject diversity, spanning nine university departments and four autonomous centers, and is at the same time uniformly focused on the developmental theme of our CHRCDA; 2) the biologic processes that we have identified for study are not only critically important to pediatrics, but also leverage existing strengths and well-established research and training collaborations between basic science and clinical departments at UT Southwestern; 3) recognizing that there has been no other time when the need to promote research careers among young physicians has been more crucial, our Department is committed to identifying the best candidates from an early stage and providing them with the encouragement and resources requisite to successful development into independent pediatric physician-scientists with a passion for discovery; and 4) despite its short course of four years, our Program has demonstrated its ability to achieve the goals established by NIH for the CHRCDA as evidenced by the success of all three of our graduating scholars in obtaining K08 or equivalent federal support either during their participation in the Program or within one year of their graduation. The CHRCDA Program at UT Southwestern will support a maximum of four Scholars at a time, each receiving an appointment of two years (which may be extended to three). During their participation in the Program, the Scholars will follow a personalized plan for research instruction and will dedicate a minimum of 80% of their effort to a rigorous research plan under the supervision of a mentor. Each Scholar's experience will continue to emphasize the identification of compelling clinically-relevant scientific questions, maintenance of project focus, creative experimental design, state-of-the-art technology, and thoughtful early career guidance.