The Clinical & Translational Tools and Resources Core (CTTR) is designed to serve the clinical research needs of COBRE investigators. The centerpiece of the core will be a powerful new research tool, the Stroke Comprehensive Multidisciplinary Database (CMD). In addition to containing information such as stroke type and disability status necessary to recruit participants, which comes from the registry established in Phase I called RESTORE (REgistry for STrOke REcovery), the CMD will be the home of all data produced when an individual participates in any research study/ies within the COBRE domain. For example, the CMD will include outcome measures extracted from the data sets collected in the QBAR Core as well as the complete data time series (e.g., neuromechanical data from behavioral measurements such as gait analyses, neurophysiological data from transcranial magnetic stimulation protocols in the Brain Stimulation Core, and neuroimaging data from structural or functional MRI scans in the Neuroimaging Core). The CMD will be a secure, query-enabled research portal with vast capacity for data sharing accessible to all COBRE investigators. Through a robust interface with the South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research Institute (SCTR), CTTR has four complementary roles that represent the core aims: 1) Recruitment & Retention ? recruit a large population of well-characterized potential participants; 2) Biomedical Informatics ? continue to develop a secure registry and database providing the ability to query the pool of participants based on specific characteristics and retrieve an extensive set of multidisciplinary measures in participants who match the search criteria; 3) Biostatistical Support ? provide a strong biostatistical infrastructure to analyze and mine the rich data set and support experimental design and data analysis; and (4) Mentoring ? enhance the research skills of COBRE investigators to conduct highly translational, mechanism- based studies in stroke recovery research and neuromodulation. COBRE funds will support the efforts of an internationally recognized clinician-researcher in the stroke field who serves as Core Director; an expert in biomedical informatics who oversees the informatics infrastructure; an expert in biostatistical methodologies and clinical trials development; and technical staff. The SCTR Research Coordinator Core will facilitate research coordination and recruitment. The integration of multi-source data into the CMD with advanced informatics tools and biostatistical analyses will provide a unique research resource for future stroke recovery research by: 1) enabling advanced searches for appropriate candidates for each scientific study by specific characteristics; 2) providing an avenue for data mining for manuscripts and pilot data generation to increase investigator and trainee productivity; and 3) embedding biostatistical and data analysis expertise throughout the CMD analyses pipelines. We envision that CMD will be a unique research resource for MUSC, South Carolina, and all members of the research and public communities with interest in stroke recovery.
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