Clinical Investigation and Translational Core

University Of Colorado Denver, Aurora CO

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY – CIT CORE Clinical and Translational research, that catalyzes the movement of bench to bedside bidirectional discovery, is a high priority for the Colorado NORC. The Clinical Intervention and Translation (CIT) Core of the Colorado NORC is devoted to fostering clinical and translational research and began operation in August of 2010, year 16 of this grant. The CIT Core was created to accommodate the growing need of NORC users to support a wide range of clinical research studies involving modification of body weight and diet to evaluate impact on physiological and behavioral outcomes. The CIT Core has made substantial contributions to the scientific underpinnings to the national agenda to address the problem of obesity by serving 79 clinical protocols from 48 unique NORC PIs and 47 sponsored projects in the last grant period. This work culminated in 381 nutrition/obesity-related peer reviewed manuscripts and supported 16 new grants and 12 career development awards. The CIT Core offers consultations for NORC researchers interested in designing and implementing clinical or translational research involving nutrition and weight management. In the last grant period, we enhanced our relationship with the CCTSI to form a full partnership, which increased the CIT Core expertise in methods for assessing dietary intake and intake behaviors (including novel wearable devices), access to multiple methods for assessing photographic food records, and pediatric services that had not been previously offered by the CIT Core, including anthropometric measurements of growth, indirect calorimetry, and oral food challenges to assess dietary allergies. This partnership also coalesced two metabolic kitchens, decreasing operational costs, and eliminating duplication in services between the CIT and CCTSI Nutrition Cores, keeping costs low for NORC investigators. Over the next 5 years of funding, the CIT Core will leverage a renewed institutional investment to create new partnerships with the CU Anschutz Adult & Child Center for Outcomes Research & Delivery Science (ACCORDS) consortium and the institutional data enterprise warehouse, Health Data Compass (HDC). Partnership with these entities will provide expertise and resources for exploration of complex health issues in obesity and provide the resources to add new measures to CIT Core studies. These partnerships will strengthen the NORC Research Base by engaging new collaborators across the clinical research spectrum and provide robust mentoring opportunities to a broader range of NORC early stage investigators (ESI). This is particularly important as the majority of our NORC senior members and mentors and, indeed, the national NORC consortium, focuses on T0-T2 research whereas many pilot applications and ESI are focused on qualitative, mixed methods and health outcomes research (T3-T4) for obesity treatment. Our new emphasis on T3-T4 research strongly aligns with overall NIH priorities.