The goals of the Oklahoma Rheumatic Disease Research Cores Center (ORDRCC) are to facilitate collaborative rheumatic disease research, provide cutting-edge technologies to address new clinically-relevant questions, recruit investigators with other interests/training to rheumatic disease investigation and foster development of junior investigators to independent rheumatic disease research careers. These goals are being met and have resulted in the doubling of rheumatic disease published manuscripts by our investigators, securing of new collaborative rheumatic disease research grants (for example the Autoimmunity Center of Excellence and Center of Research Translation in Sjogren's syndrome), tripling collaborative publications between ORDRCC investigators and helping launch the independent research careers of 8 local junior ORDRCC investigators and distant junior ORDRCC investigators. Our ORDRCC provides samples and experimental methodologies to a large cadre of investigators. Our ORDRCC has grown to encompass human geneticists, immunologists, immunogeneticists, bioinformaticians, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, molecular biologists, coagulation biologists and inflammation experts with pediatric and adult clinical investigators (spanning the clinical disciplines of rheumatology, dermatology, hematology/oncology, endocrinology, allergy/immunology, genetics and cardiology). This ORDRCC will continue to enhance and grow a multi-disciplinary approach to rheumatic disease research. The Administrative and Enrichment Core is the ORDRCC centralized governing resource and serves as a liaison between the ORDRCC Core leadership. Internal and External Advisory Committees, the Research Cores, and all Center investigators. In particular, the Administrative and Enrichment Core focuses on providing ORDRCC administrative and fiscal management support, executing data sharing strategies, and managing material transfer agreements. The ORDRCC Pilot Program has an annual competition which funds two junior investigators, or investigators new to rheumatology, with one year of support and has succeeded in helping investigators secure additional funding. This Core also houses the ORDRCC Mentoring program which ensures every ORDRCC Junior Investigator has an active mentoring committee. The ORDRCC Enrichment program is housed in this Core and coordinates a weekly Research Conference, weekly Work-in-Progress series, outside speakers, an annual symposium, and a proposed
The ORDRCC Administrative and Enrichment Core provides the infrastructure necessary to coordinate and fiscally manage this multi-investigator grant; to prioritize projects to secure Core support; to forge multidisciplinary collaborations to address crucial; clinically relevant rheumatic disease questions; to foster junior investigator development through pilot project funding and mentoring support and to bring the diverse investigators and trainees together through Enrichment activities to make critical scientific discoveries.
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