The Clinical Core will be led by Ramnik Xavier (Director), Andrew Chan (Co-Director), and Ashwin Ananthakrishnan (Technical Director). The services offered by the Clinical Core can be organized into (1) consultation, training, and education; (2) biospecimen services; and (3) data collection and analysis services. Consultation and education take the form of consulting in research methods and analysis, as well as education and training of junior investigators, residents, and fellows. Biospecimen services include clinical database and patient identification, biospecimen collection and processing services, tissue biorepository services, and serum biobank services. Data collection and analysis is facilitated through regulatory services, a genotype and microbiome library, and bioinformatics support. This core serves as a hub for interactions between clinicians and basic researchers, allowing basic scientists to test hypotheses in human samples and clinicians to gain valuable insight into disease states.
The specific aims of the Clinical Core are to (1) build a biorepository of patients with Crohn?s disease and ulcerative colitis with accurate phenotyping of disease as well as sampling of blood, stool, urine, and tissue in various disease states (active/inactive disease) and related to various therapeutic and environmental perturbations; (2) define the phenotypic implications of genetic loci with regard to clinical manifestations, response to therapy, and to examine the interaction with the environment; (3) facilitate education and training in research by providing consultations regarding study design, methods, and analysis as well as attract new investigators to the field through these services; and (4) translate laboratory and clinical research findings into interventions that serve to improve diagnosis, develop biomarkers for disease monitoring and prognostication, and optimize treatment algorithms.
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