The Oklahoma Rheumatic Diseases Research Cores Center (ORDRCC) currently supports rheumatic disease research for 32 junior ORDRCC investigators (some from outside Oklahoma) and 16 senior Center Investigators. Through the Clinical Characterization and Biorepository, the ORDRCC provides clinically well characterized patient resources for adult and pediatric systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), Sjogren's syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome and other diseases to our ORDRCC investigators. Additionally, ORDRCC investigators have access to cutting-edge technologies through our multi-disciplinary Phenotyping Core, which provides services in genetics, genomics, proteomics and immune phenotype/immune function assessment. The Administrative and Enrichment Core facilitates scientific advances and fosters multi-disciplinary interactions. Through implementation of these ORDRCC resources and activities, over the past funding cycle our rheumatic disease publications have doubled, our rheumatic disease publications including multiple ORDRCC investigators have tripled and rheumatic disease publications with other outside investigators have more than quadrupled. Along with this increase in collaborative, multidisciplinary rheumatic disease projects, our NIH funding has doubled, including several new multi-investigator grants which evolved out of ORDRCC interactions, including the Oklahoma Autoimmunity Center of Excellence and Center of Research Translational in Sjogren's. Eight of our junior investigators have graduated to Center status after receiving their initial independent NIH funding. Capitalizing on the scientific strengths of our ORDRCC Investigators, the overarching goals of our ORDRCC are to 1) integrate a multidisciplinary group of basic scientists and clinical investigators to study fundamental aspects of rheumatic disease, 2) fortify and expand this nucleus through directed recruitments, common educational forums, annual investigator meetings and collaborative scientific interactions, 3) offer access to critical, well-phenotyped clinical rheumatic disease collections, facilitating rheumatic disease research throughout the US, 4) implement access to centralized cutting-edge technologies to facilitate their rheumatic disease research and 5) provide the administrative, financial, and technical foundation to Oklahoma RDRCC investigators to accelerate their progress in understanding the etiology, pathogenesis, and management of rheumatic disease through multidisciplinary approaches.
The Oklahoma Rheumatic Disease Research Cores Center facilitates, supports and expands multidisciplinary rheumatic disease research through developing junior investigators, attracting new talent to rheumatic disease research, participating in diverse Enrichment activities, supporting pilot projects, providing well-phenotyped samples to ORDRCC investigators for their individual studies and identifying, developing and applying new methodologies and technologies to facilitate rheumatic disease discoveries.
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