The Biostatistics Core (BC) provides expertise in biostatistics, clinical trials, and experimental design, as well as supporting electronic data management for clinical research. Scientific consultation is provided by faculty statisticians who collaborate in the development of pilot projects, grant proposals and clinical protocols. The BC statisticians help design research studies, and conduct interim and final data analyses. Core services include the development of case-report forms, databases and data entry tools to initiate clinical protocols, as well as access to clinical research and cancer registry data repositories for retrospective research. The Core provides expertise and access to a variety of technologies, including modern statistical computing environments 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 and electronic data capture;web portals for data entry and study monitoring;and a centralized MS SQL-server database for clinical research. Service to the institution includes statistical review of cancer-related clinical research protocols. The core is directed by Jeffrey Longmate, PhD, Director of the Department of Biostatistics. Co-Director is Joyce Niland, PhD, Director of the Clinical Protocol Management Core. The staff of the BC includes a large part of the department, and the BC enables their participation in Cancer Centerrelated pilot projects and proposals, which may later develop into externally funded projects. The BC is directly 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 as supporting several other cores. The BC collaborates continually with the Biomedical Informatics Core to operate and further develop the MIDAS clinical research database, and regularly collaborates with members of the Clinical Protocol Management Core to implement City of Hope-conducted or coordinated clinical protocols. 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 opened with BC collaboration. Annual budget for the core is $2,651,640, with 62% from the institution, 34% other sources, and 4% ($100,100) requested from the CCSG.
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