Director:
Co-Director: Hans Widlund, PhD
The Translational Resource Research Core (TRRC) is a new pilot Core of the HSDRC, supported by institutional funds. To meet the goals of the NIH Roadmap and to enable investigators working directly and indirectly in the area of skin disease research to study human populations we conceived of the TRRC in 2005. The Core led jointly by a molecular epidemiologist and an immunologist/basic scientist with considerable expertise in using human tissue specimens for research. Initiated with Department funds three years ago, the Core has already developed a model to provide unique services and is ready to be included as part of the HSDRC’s mission. Importantly, the Core has mastered regulatory and IRB issues, created the infrastructure for recruiting study participants when they present as patients in the ambulatory or inpatient setting, streamlined methods to collect, process and store biological samples, both linked to clinical data or anonymized as required by individual studies and optimized collection of high quality data.
The specific aims for the TRRC are:
Aim 1: To provide a new IRB service that will provide education on regulatory issues, help with writing and submitting IRB applications and tracking of IRB applications; careful attention is needed when conducting human subjects research where consent forms in simple English and/or Spanish are created, protocols and protocol summaries written, trial schematics drawn and clinical data points and end-points defined.
Aim 2: To provide a new database/programming service that enables recruitment of study participants; investigators will be able to build a team approach to recruitment of participants, leveraging systems that we have in place to get access to individuals presented to ambulatory clinics or admitted to the hospital based on diagnostic codes (ICD-9).
Aim 3: To provide a new biostatistical service, with education on quantitative methods and study design. These include, for example, differences between observational and interventional studies, and types of studies namely cohort versus case-control. As part of this service, investigators will have access to courses at the hospital level as well as support to take courses at the adjacent Harvard School of Public Health.
Aim 4: To provide a new biological sample processing service including collection, processing and storage with the highest quality control measures in place; we will enable collection, processing and storage of biological samples
