The Biostatistics Core (BC) provides expertise in biostatistics, clinical trials, and experimental design, as wellas supporting electronic data management for clinical research. Scientific consultation is provided by facultystatisticians who collaborate in the development of pilot projects, grant proposals and clinical protocols. TheBC statisticians help design research studies, and conduct interim and final data analyses. Core servicesinclude the development of case-report forms, databases and data entry tools to initiate clinical protocols, aswell as access to clinical research and cancer registry data repositories for retrospective research. The Coreprovides expertise and access to a variety of technologies, including modern statistical computingenvironments such as SAS, JMP, Splus, and R; specialized statistical computing tools for microarrays,genetic linkage and association studies, and pharmacokinetics; tools to implement scannable forms andelectronic data capture; web portals for data entry and study monitoring; and a centralized MS SQL-serverdatabase for clinical research. Service to the institution includes statistical review of cancer-related clinicalresearch protocols. The core is directed by Jeffrey Longmate, PhD, Director of the Department ofBiostatistics. Co-Director is Joyce Niland, PhD, Director of the Clinical Protocol Management Core. The staffof the BC includes a large part of the department, and the BC enables their participation in Cancer Centerrelatedpilot projects and proposals, which may later develop into externally funded projects. The BC isdirectly involved in Cancer Center research from the inception of a research idea to the publication of results.The BC focuses heavily on clinical research, but also supports basic and translational research, as well assupporting several other cores. The BC collaborates continually with the Biomedical Informatics Core tooperate and further develop the MIDAS clinical research database, and regularly collaborates with membersof the Clinical Protocol Management Core to implement City of Hope-conducted or coordinated clinicalprotocols. In 2005, the BC was used by 80 CC members from all Programs, and logged 204 projects,including 21 grants naming BC personnel (7 multi-project grants), and 32 clinical protocols newly openedwith BC collaboration. Annual budget for the core is $2,651,640, with 62% from the institution, 34% othersources, and 4% ($100,100) requested from the CCSG.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 1396 publications
