Core A will provide scientific, budgetary, administrative, logistic, and biostatistical oversight to all aspects of the Program Project. The Core will facilitate communication among investigators and sharing of reagents, tools, specimens, and data; will ensure appropriate allocation of funds to each Project and appropriate use of these funds; will provide clerical support; will coordinate the Projects with subcontracted institutions; will organize regular investigator meetings; and will provide biostatistical assistance. Dr. Bolli, Core Leader, will be responsible for the overall coordination, integration, and administration of the Program Project, for the appropriate utilization of the funds, for compliance with institutional and federal regulations, for the scientific productivity of the Program, and for any issues related to the Program. The Principal Investigator will be assisted by the other members of the Executive Committee, which will be composed of the four Project Leaders and the four Core Leaders. The Principal Investigator and the executive Committee will meet on a monthly basis to discuss the scientific progress, data, problems, and future directions for the four Projects. Scientific responsibilities include (1) providing leadership in maintaining the focus of the investigators, (2) providing statistical assistance, and (3) weekly meetings of all Program Project Investigators. Administrative and financial responsibilities include (1) implementing guidelines for PPG support, (2) administering the budget according to NIH guidelines, (3) monitoring budgets for each Project and Core, and (4) ensuring compliance with the institutional and NIH regulations. The Biostatistician working in the Core will be Dr. Maiying Kong. She will attend the monthly meetings of the Executive Committee, review the experimental data, analyze them, calculate group sizes, and ensure that all studies are performed with rigor. Indeed, an important aspect of this Program Project is that in all in vivo studies proposed in this Project, we will adhere strictly to the procedures that we used in the CAESAR Consortium. Specifically: i) all animals will be allocated to treatment group randomly (randomization will be performed by Dr. Kong); ii) all investigators will be blinded to treatment allocation until the final data analysis is released by Dr. Kong; iii) exclusion criteria will be established a priori, before the experiments are started, not during or after the experiments; iv) group sizes will be determined a priori, before the experiments are started (based upon power analysis by Dr. Kong) and will not be changed during or after the experiment; v) the experiments will be carried out until the predetermined sample sizes are achieved, without any knowledge of interim results. After the predetermined sample sizes are achieved, all data will be given to Dr. Kong, where they will be unblinded and analyzed by appropriate statistical methods. These are the same procedures that we have used successfully in CAESAR for the past six years. Use of these methods will ensure rigor and greatly reduce the chance of spurious or misleading results.
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