The rapid development of new approaches to interrogate the immune and inflammatory systems comes with a growing demand for both technical and conceptual expertise in these methodologies. The Human Phenotyping Core was created to support these activities within the Oklahoma Rheumatic Disease Resources Cores Center (ORDRCC). To address the most broadly scientifically interesting and clinically important questions, our ORDRCC Investigators need access to cutting-edge approaches, such as scRNA-Seq/CITE- Seq, ChipCytometry, and CyTOF to perform incisive experiments and to generate high-quality, reproducible data. The Human Phenotyping Core will allow our investigators to ask novel questions regarding the molecular phenotypes of rheumatic diseases. In addition to providing ORDRCC investigators with high-content biomolecular phenotyping services, the Human Phenotyping Core in conjunction with the Clinical Characterization and Biorepository Core (CCBC) will provide access to datasets containing previously collected genetic, proteomic, and biomolecular phenotypes of clinical subjects whose samples are available from the CCBC. The tight integration of the Human Phenotyping Core, CCBC and our databases will enable investigators to efficiently phenotype samples and correlate molecular and cellular phenotypes with clinical characteristics, to select more homogeneous patients for hypothesis-driven investigation and help provide the foundational knowledge needed for precision medicine in rheumatic disease care. By consolidating a range of technologies required for the complete characterization of molecular or cellular phenotypes into a single unit, the Human Phenotyping Core (HPC) will streamline services to help ORDRCC investigators in the efficient planning, design, execution and data analysis required for their individual projects. The HPC will provide experience in performing research using clinical specimens, technical expertise in a wide range of molecular and bioassays, access to equipment and resources thus enabling cutting-edge approaches to address research questions, quality control assessment of the data collected and data processing suitable for higher end statistical modeling of phenotype/clinical associations.
SPECIFIC AIM 1 : Assist ORDRCC Investigators, JCIs and Scholars to navigate the stages of project development, experimental design, resource planning and execution of translational and mechanistic studies through Core Management and individual consultations.
SPECIFIC AIM 2 : Provide access to advanced molecular phenotyping technologies and experienced technical personnel for efficient execution of advanced experimental data plans.
SPECIFIC AIM 3 : Establish processes to ensure data quality control, processing of raw data, and preparation of data sets for more extensive analysis and statistical modeling.
SPECIFIC AIM 4 : Evaluate, assess and implement new cutting-edge technologies for molecular phenotyping.
