This is a proposal is for a Scholars in Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) Program at the University of South Florida '_(USF). USF has made major strides over the past decade toward the goal of becoming a major research university increasing external research funding from less than $25M to nearly $250M annually. Over half of this funding is in the Health Sciences Center (HSC). About half of this funding currently is from industry-sponsored clinical therapeutic trials, and with the other half of the funding is for investigator-initiated research. Thus, it is a priority of the USF HSC to concentrate on developing a strong cadre of faculty members with expertise in patient-oriented research that is capable of receiving peer-reviewed external funding, in addition, we have a clear need to upgrade the subspecialty fellowship training programs to train increasing numbers of subspeciaity fellows to become academic clinical and translational researchers. The K30 grant is an ideal mechanism for jumpstarting these efforts. Fortunately, within our institution the Moffitt Cancer Center, an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, has done an outstanding job of building a clinical research program, a clinical and translational research mentoring program for junior faculty, and a NCI K12- funded Clinical and Translational Research Training program. The proposed program will utilize the expertise developed at Moffitt, as well as many of the smaller foci of clinical research expertise at USF, to train junior faculty and fellows. The SPOR Program will lead to a Masters degree. It will consist of a core of classroom and web-based didactic teaching and a mentored clinical research project. Many of the courses already exist, and others will be derived from current courses, whereas some courses will be designed specifically for SPOR Program trainees. Required courses will include research and professional ethics; grantsmanship; scientific writing; diversity in clinical research; principles of cell biology, physiology, pharmacology, and molecular biology; biostatistics and informatics; fundamentals of successful patient-oriented research. There will be three tracks available: therapeutic clinical researchers (clinical trial design; Phase !/11clinical trial design, conduct, analysis and funding), population-based research (epidemiology and trial design), mechanisms of human disease (molecular basis of metabolism, clinical pharmacology, bioinformatics). A thesis or peer-reviewed publication(s) based on mentored research will be required. The executive committee will oversee the Program and will have subcommittees for (1) trainee selection, (2) mentor selection (3) curriculum (4) evaluation processes; and (5) overall SPOR Program progress. Process assessment will be based on evaluations of courses, mentored research, and the Program overall. The major long-term outcomes evaluated will include the number of trainees in academic positions, trainees doing productive clinical research (manuscripts and abstracts), and trainees with national Deer-review funded clinical and translational research Droqrams.
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