BOOST and PROPEL awards are clinical research grants that award Clinical Research Unit (CRU) resources such as research space, specialized research nursing, imaging assistance (i.e. DXA,CV core), and research nutrition resources to ICTR investigators, based on merit and willingness to be actively monitored by the Translational Research Evaluation Committee (TREC) for study-specific milestones. All projects are monitored on a quarterly basis for attainment of milestones.

While many awards still go to individuals, advances in translational research are increasingly dependent on teams of individuals with different perspectives and skills working collaboratively towards a common goal. The concept of Team Science answers the question, “How do groups, particularly interdisciplinary groups, move through a process together?”

April 21, 2021   Members of the research community   OpenSpecimen is a bio-bank management tool used to collect, manage, process, annotate and distribute bio-specimens and associated data to selected users. It offers an enterprise-wide comprehensive set of features including: biospecimen collection, inventory tracking and customizable support for storage containers (i.e., freezers, shelves, racks, boxes, positions).  OpenSpecimen for bio-bank management is considered a “Tier A” best practice for storing biospecimen metadata, including Protected Health Information (PHI), by the Johns Hopkins Data Trust Research Sub-Council.  OpenSpecimen allows research teams to associate biospecimens with clinical data in databases such as Epic. Utilization … Continue reading →

With scores of COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 clinical trials underway, the NIH continues to stress the importance for researchers to register their trials on ClinicalTrials.gov as soon as possible.   National Institutes of Health (NIH) director, Dr. Francis Collins, released a memo in November urging researchers to report their research findings on ClinicalTrials.gov ahead of the regulatory deadline requirements. In an effort to expedite the process to report, the agency prioritizes COVID-19 trials to make them available within days of submission.   “The scientific community bears collective responsibility for expediting the dissemination of knowledge from NIH-funded research. Doing so will bring … Continue reading →

A new study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania uses computer modeling to suggest that eviction bans authorized during the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the infection rate and not only protected those who would have lost their housing but also entire communities from the spread of infections. With widespread job loss in the U.S. during the pandemic, many state and local governments temporarily halted evictions last spring, and just as these protections were about to expire in September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared a national eviction ban. However, the order is only extended … Continue reading →

The Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Network welcomes George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services as its newest member.   George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services has joined the Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Network (JHCRN). The JHCRN is designed to bring together academic- and community-based clinical researchers to provide new opportunities for research collaborations and accelerate the transfer of new diagnostic, treatment, and disease-prevention advances from the research arena to patient care. George Mason is the first university to join the JHCRN, which was established by Johns Hopkins Medicine in 2009 and includes the clinical health systems … Continue reading →

In the movie Mary Poppins, the title character sings that “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Now, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have shown how a radioactive sugar — combined with a widely used imaging technology — could soon help physicians make the medicine work better by enabling them to rapidly detect and monitor infections from the largest group of bacterial pathogens threatening humans. The new imaging tool uses positron emission tomography — commonly known as a PET scan — to noninvasively find and track dangerous infections from the microbial family Enterobacterales, a group that includes the Escherichia coli strains that cause … Continue reading →

This course provides an intensive introduction to clinical research methods, emphasizing epidemiological and biostatistical methods. Instructors are Daniel Ford, MD, MPH, vice dean for clinical investigation at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Karen Bandeen-Roche, PhD, MS, the Hurley Dorrier Professor and Chair in Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

A Systematic Review and Meta‐analysis This publication was made possible by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) which is funded in part by Grant Number UL1 TR003098 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official view of the Johns Hopkins ICTR, NCATS, or NIH.   Please visit https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jum.15676?af=R to read the full article.   Abstract Knee effusion can be detected by physical examination, ultrasound … Continue reading →

Predoctoral Clinical Research Training Program director Mary Catherine Beach, MD, MPH appointed director of medical student research and scholarship   Dr. Beach is a professor of medicine at the school of medicine, with a joint appointment in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a core faculty member at the Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research. Dr. Beach developed the Scholarly Concentrations course in the Genes to Society curriculum and has directed the course since 2009. It is a required component of the … Continue reading →