The Community and Collaboration Component (C&C) of the Clinical and Translational Science Collaborative (CTSC) selected two collaborative teams to receive the first round of pilot awards focused on team science with stakeholder engagement. Recipients needed to demonstrate they were an interdisciplinary research team with a special focus on the integration of community, clinical and/or industry stakeholders as part of the research endeavor, working together on translational research projects to improve population health.
Translation, as defined by the National Center for Advancing Translational Science, the CTSC funding agency, is described as “the process of turning observations in the laboratory, clinic and community into interventions that improve the health of individuals and populations—from diagnostics and therapeutics to medical procedures and behavioral interventions.”
The two inaugural CTSC C&C pilot recipients are (pending National Institutes of Health approval):
“Virtual Assistant System to Enhance Patient Self-Medication Outcomes”
An interdisciplinary approach, in direct collaboration with a community care facility, to identify medication management challenges and develop a new interactive “virtual assistant” decision-support technology platform that can be tested to see how well it improves medication adherence, patient quality of life and outcomes.
The team is:
- Colin Drummond (biomedical engineering)
- Shanina Knighton, Celeste Alfes and Elizabeth Zimmermann (Frances Payne Bolton School)
- Scott Frank (School of Medicine)
- Miriam L. Pekarek and Eve Davis (Ohio Living Breckenridge Village—stakeholders)
- Patients and their caregivers at Breckenridge (Stakeholders)
“Translating A Product That Prevents Surgical Adhesions into a Large Animal Model”
This multidisciplinary team identified a low-cost, biocompatible device coating that can prevent or reduce post-surgical complications including fibrosis, scarring and unwanted adhesions. The successful findings of this work in rodent models proved the need to provide key data in a clinically relevant pig model to continue the translation of these findings eventually into the patient population, where the burden of post-surgical complications could be greatly reduced, especially among those with greater risks for complications. The findings from this pilot effort will be crucial in forming commercial partnerships with major mesh manufacturers in biomedical engineering.
The team is:
- Horst von Recum (PI—biomedical engineering)
- Michael Rosen (surgery, Cleveland Clinic—stakeholder)
- Julius Korley (CEO of Affinity Therapeutics—stakeholder)