Translational Science Core

For Additional Information:

Usha Murughiyan, MD
Director of Translational Science Core
Email: murughiyan@marshall.edu

Alfred Cecchetti, PhD
Co-Director of Translational Science Core
Email: cecchetti@marshall.edu

Rajan Lamichhane, PhD
Co-Director of Translational Science Core
Email: lamichhaner@marshall.edu

Translational Science Core

The COBRE ACCORD having assessed the needs of the COBRE investigators and equally importantly, the needs of the SOM’s and MU’s other researchers, has decided that a comprehensive Translational Science Core is essential for our investigators. Thus, we have proposed the following Translational Science Core as the evolution of the Biostats and Research Design precore.

Clinical research and scientific progress often go hand in hand with interdisciplinary research and technological advances. Without a support infrastructure that provides specific technologies and goal-specific expertise, it would be challenging to accomplish the targeted goal.  The current biomedical revolution, manifested by the ever-increasing speed of technological innovations and interdisciplinary nature of medicine, means that an individual researcher can no longer afford and master all state‐of‐the‐art techniques. Currently, Marshall University has an active research community in translational and basic sciences and has procured several sources of external funding. Furthermore, research activities have grown rapidly over the last few years, especially in obesity-related disorders. Most of the research in this area is conducted by individual researcher and there is a growing need for a core facility that can provide cutting-edge technologies and other research relevant expertise in an affordable manner. We propose to establish a “Translational Science Core” which will facilitate obesity or obesity-related disorder research in both basic and clinical sciences by providing translational research consultation services. These services including patient de-identified data collection, patient sample collection, research design and protocol development for patient sample collection, analytics of translational data and publication assistance. Some of these services are currently available as individual services and are not utilized effectively.

Mission

By implementing the Translational Science Core, the Appalachian Center for Cellular Transport in Obesity Related Disorder (ACCORD) aims to provide researchers with access to a full range of services to facilitate successful identification and recruitment of patients for basic, translational, and clinical research studies in obesity and obesity-related disorders.

As shown in the Workflow diagram below, the Translational Science Core will identify and coordinate the recruitment of participants through clinical informatics, assist with research design, procure human samples, help in clinical data collection, assist in IRB submission, set forth quality assurance and regulatory compliance, and publication. It will also provide biostatistics help in the interpretation of research results related to clinical measures for basic research as well as clinical pathology analysis. The Translational Science Core will further establish a data repository of the collected data (collected by the Core only) and will make it available to the relevant or interested investigators.  The establishment of Translational Science Core will certainly foster a collaborative research environment that is crucial for competitive interdisciplinary science and will be an integral part of future grant proposals by investigators at Marshall University. Lastly, Masters of Science Students in Clinical and Translational Sciences will be encouraged to participate in the Translational Science Core to further their education in this area.

Services

Services Provided by Translational Science Core:

  • Project overview consultation
  • Study design and technical feasibility consultation
  • Study population identification consultation
  • Sample collection protocol development consultation
  • Ethics consultation on collecting bio samples
  • Assistance with protocol development and IRB submission
  • Data collection, analysis, and interpretation consultation
  • Sharing of collected data to the relevant party
  • Coordination of human specimen pathology service
  • Publication assistance
Benefits

All basic and translational science researchers at Marshall will benefit from this core. Currently, Drs. Travis Salisbury, Subha Arthur, Soudamani Singh, Alip Borthakur, Jennifer Haynes, Komal Sodhi, Piyali Dasgupta, Jiang Liu, Bala Palaniappan, Sandrine Pierre, Nalini Santanam, Joseph Shapiro, and Uma Sundaram, to name some of the investigators, have research projects that require human specimens and they will immediately benefit from this core. As noted above MS students who specialize in Clinical and Translational Science will also educationally benefit from this core.