This is a proposal to establish a General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital Medical Center. The primary function of the GCRC will 1. To promote and enhance higher quality and more efficient and productive and clinical investigation. 2. Create a nucleus around which pre and postdoctoral training and educational programs can be developed and strengthened. 3. Facilitate the cross fertilization and interaction of basic scientists with clinical faculty. 4. Provide an ideal environment in which medical students, housestaff, fellows, and junior faculty can stimulated to formulate their own research ideas and career objectives. The physical facility will consist of an eight-bed unit, six beds on SW 6 and two in the AIDS unit located on NW 3 to be used for AIDS-related research; an outpatient facility in the same geographic area, a core laboratory, a metabolic kitchen, nurses station, conference room, room for potential CLINFO System, a room for students, housestaff and fellows, and offices or the program director, associate director, and administrator. The center will be strategically located in proximity to the main stream of clinical activities including ward medicine and surgery, the intensive care unit, the coronary care unit, radiology, pathology and other ancillary facilities. The center will be jointly operated by the UM and JMH based both on mutual academic and fiscal commitments and responsibilities. The use of the center will be open to all disciplines in the medical center. Clinical investigation protocols include in this proposal come from Endocrine-Metabolism, Diabetes, Nephrology, Cardiology, Hepatology, Surgery, Neonatology, Psychiatry, Hematology, Psychology, and Oncology. Collaborative interaction with the basic sciences is evident particularly with the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and is likely to grow rapidly. Some of the history and recent developments at the UM/JMH center, relevant to this application, are briefly reviewed with emphasis on the following points: 1. Almost unparalleled growth Of the UM/JMH medical center both as a medical and research institution. 2. Extraordinary increase in the quantity and quality of biomedical research at the School. 3. Recent surge in the quality of the basic sciences and the number of collaborative programs between basic scientists and clinical faculty. It is our earnest conviction that the establishment of a GCRC has become critical to further academic growth of this medical center.
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