Research INKlings April 2013

RESEARCH INKLINGS SCRA and Boeing

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On February 19, 2013, SCRA and Boeing held a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Summit for small business owners and universities.

The Summit provided a forum to enhance partnerships between small businesses and universities and leverage funding from Department of Defense (DoD) SBIR/STTR programs.

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SBIR/STTR programs provide over $1M in early stage research and development funding directly to the small businesses working cooperatively with faculty at research universities.

This one-day event featured speakers from The Boeing Company, Department of the Navy SBIR/STTR Program Office, MUSC and five other state universities.

APRIL 2013

In this Issue:

Research INKlings is an on-line newsletter prepared by the Office of

Research Development providing research news, policy changes and other relevant information for MUSC

faculty, staff and students.

Continued on page 2

Inspire Small Businesses and Universities to Partner

The SCresearch EXPO provides an opportunity for the community to connect with MUSC researchers to raise awareness of research opportunities and available resources. You are invited to join the MUSC community, including students, faculty, patients, and staff, to learn more about the more than 1,000 active research studies happening on campus. In addition to study enrollment, keynote speakers, food, chair massages, prizes, blood pressure checks and research resources will serve to enrich the attendee experience. The EXPO will be held Tuesday, May 7 in the MUSC Horseshoe from 10:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. For more information, contact the SCTR SUCCESS Center at success@musc.edu or 843-792-8300.

3rd Annual SCresearch EXPO

P2 SCRA & Boeing SBIR/STTR Summit P2 Developing Scholars Award P3 Technology Development Officer &

Licensing Officer P4 Research Workshop: How to Find

Funding P4 Peggy Schachte Research Mentor

Award P5 Researchers Contribute Two of Top

16 Publications for Vitamin D P6 NIH Public Access Policy

Compliance Update P6 NIH Launches Blog on Behavioral &

Social Sciences P7 shRNA Shared Technology Resource

P7 Hollings Cancer Center Welcomes New Faculty

P8 Grantsmanship Workshop, MUSC Postdoctoral Association, National Post Doctoral Association Meeting

Research INKlings April 2013

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Adriana Ocampo, program manager for the Boeing Company’s SBIR/STTR programs, placed special emphasis on topics from DoD STTR number 2013.A solicitation released in February.

During the afternoon, breakout sessions were held to address specific technologies, and to provide networking opportunities for small businesses/universities in attendance to showcase their engineering and technical research capabilities, services, and products related to the

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recent solicitation.

Dr. Stephen Lanier, Associate Provost for Research, provided key information regarding areas for potential engagement for technology development and industry partnerships. He stated, “MUSC has always been at the forefront of biomedical innovation and has an ecosystem to market our discoveries and advance technologies.”

The Department of Defense issues three SBIR and two STTR solicitations for proposals

SCRA and Boeing SBIR/STTR Summit

STTR's most important role is to bridge the gap between

performance of basic science and commercialization of

resulting innovations.

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annually. Each solicitation has a pre-release, open and close date. During the pre-release period the government is not accepting proposals, but small businesses can discuss technical questions directly with the topic authors. A list of SBIR/STTR solicitations is available at SBIR.gov.

The MUSC Foundation Developing Scholar Award is to recognize and reward junior faculty members who have made outstanding contributions to the research mission of MUSC, either with their individual research program or as part of an interdisciplinary research team, and to promote the continued development of these creative scholars. The award is aimed at individuals who have successfully demonstrated the capacity to compete for extramural funding but who are still in the formative stages of their career and demonstrate exceptional promise for the future. Candidates are restricted to faculty members holding the rank of Assistant Professor who have been on the MUSC faculty at least two, but no more than six, academic years.

Any member of the MUSC faculty may make nominations. The nominating package should include the full curriculum vitae of the nominee in standard MUSC format, letters from four scholars outside MUSC attesting to the research achievements of the nominee with two of the letters from individuals other than mentors, and a statement from the nominator (not to exceed 1000 words) outlining the candidate’s background and potential for continued growth and development. The deadline is Friday, May 3, 2013. Please refer to the nomination procedures before submitting your information to Dr. Stephen M. Lanier, Ph.D., Associate Provost for Research, c/o Robin Hanckel, (hanckelr@musc.edu).

MUSC Foundation Developing Scholars Award Sc

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Christine Dixon Thiesing is the Licensing Officer at the MUSC Foundation for Research Development. Her role is to market and negotiate license agreements for intellectual property that arises out of research at MUSC. Ms. Thiesing is rejoining the FRD team, where she held a similar post 2003-2004. In the interim, she served as Director of Accounting for Thiesing Law Firm. Prior to her first term at the FRD, she served in an array of roles with CyDex, Inc., a start-up company founded by the University of Kansas

to commercialize the Captisol® drug delivery system. For her first three years with CyDex, Ms. Thiesing marketed and licensed Captisol® to the pharmaceutical industry. As the company grew, she transitioned into the role of Manager of Finance and Accounting, which included extensive participation in the company's equity offerings to institutional investors. Ms. Thiesing holds an MBA with a focus in finance from the University of Kansas. She obtained a B.A. in Biology from the University of Kansas Honors Program, where she was a Watkins-Berger Scholar. She is also a member of the Licensing Executives Society. Ms. Thiesing may be reached dixonthi@musc.edu.

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One of the newest members to the MUSC Foundation for Research Development (FRD) group is Dr. Jesse Goodwin, a joint hire with SCTR. As the Technology Development Officer,

her role is to support the patenting and commercialization efforts of MUSC’s discoveries and technologies. Dr. Goodwin manages MUSC’s portfolio of intellectual property, which involves identifying, soliciting, and evaluating invention disclosures for patent, copyright, and market potential. Dr. Goodwin interfaces with the inventors to bridge the gap in the FRD’s understanding of a technology and the inventors’ understanding of the tech transfer process.  

Dr. Goodwin comes to Charleston from an Intellectual Property consulting firm in Boston. While serving as the Medical Device Group Leader, she gained a wide range of experience in areas such as orthopaedic devices, obesity treatment methods and

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devices, cardiac and venous valve replacements, and minimally invasive surgical tools. Projects led by Goodwin include prior art and freedom to operate searches, patent strategy assessments, white space analysis, competitive intelligence and license/acquisition target identification.  

While conducting her post-doctoral research at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, she was awarded an NIH post-doctoral fellowship. Her research examined the relationship between articular cartilage & mechanical loading and proteoglycan metabolism. She has published her work in journals such as the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, Journal of Orthopaedic Research, and Osteoarthritis Cartilage. She holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Stony Brook University where she examined the relationship between spine mechanics and low back pain with special focus on the facet joint capsular ligament.  

Located in the Bioengineering building, Dr. Goodwin may be reached at goodwijs@musc.edu.  

Technology Development Officer

Licensing Officer

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Research INKlings April 2013

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Research Workshop: “How to Find Funding using Pivot”

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• Update information in your own scholar profile

• Track funding opportunities, save searches, and set up email alerts

• Share searches & funding opportunities with others and see opportunities & searches others have shared with you.

Upon evaluation, participants of the Pivot Training Workshop gave an overwhelmingly positive response. Over 80% said they were able to find new funding opportunities in that single training session, and many agreed that the workshop was useful and informative. The Office of Research Development is in the beginning stages of implementing a more structured approach to research training to assist faculty, post docs, graduate students and staff as they pursue their research interests. For more information regarding Pivot and quick links, please visit the funding opportunity webpage or contact Karen Harper at harperk@musc.edu.

Peggy Schachte Research Mentor

Award

2013 Nomination

The Peggy Schachte Research Mentor award recognizes individuals at MUSC who mentor faculty in obtaining research support from private and public organizations or government agencies.

The award is aimed at a faculty mentor or other colleague - widely recognized as an outstanding research mentor - encourages and supports the advancement of others as successful, extramurally funded investigators.

The mentorship must have led directly to a significant research grant award to a mentored faculty member with a rank no higher than Associate Professor at the time of receiving the research grant award. Nominations are accepted from all MUSC faculty and staff.

The deadline for nominations is Friday, May 3, 2013.

Please refer to the nomination procedures before submitting your nomination to Dr. Stephen M. Lanier, Ph.D., Associate Provost for Research, c/o Robin Hanckel, (hanckelr@musc.edu).

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Recently, the Office of Research Development hosted three "How to Find Funding using PIVOT" training sessions. These hands-on sessions provided nearly 60 faculty, post docs, graduate students and staff the opportunity to learn all about how to successfully conduct research funding searches.

Pivot allows researchers to discover appropriate funding opportunities for their projects and effectively collaborate with colleagues. Pivot, designed for research professionals, faculty, staff researchers, postdocs and graduate students, combines the most comprehensive, editorially maintained databases of funding opportunities and scholar profiles available. Pivot links scholars with funding and funding with scholars using powerful and intuitive tools.

The Pivot training conducted by Chris Horn, customer education and training manager, demonstrated how to:

• Find timely and relevant funding opportunities

• Find scholars and experts in a variety of disciplines

Research INKlings April 2013

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and were assigned to take supplements containing 400, 2000, or 4000 IU/d vitamin D3 or a placebo. This study found that it took 4000 IU/d to reach a nearly optimal level of vitamin D. Those taking the higher vitamin D doses had significantly reduced risk of primary Cesarean section delivery and pre-eclampsia.

“It really has been a collective effort and MUSC and SCTR should see this as an example of collaborative research at its best. We would never have been able to conduct these studies without the support of SCTR’s research infrastructure. We will continue to benefit from such support and collaboration,” said Carol Wagner, M.D., MUSC professor of pediatrics and neonatology, on the study’s findings.

The benefits of vitamin D in reducing risk of cancer

One of the important and well-documented effects of vitamin D is reduced risk of cancer and increased survival after cancer diagnosis. Another cancer paper reported the results of supplementation with 4000 IU/d vitamin D3 those with low-grade biopsy-assayed prostate cancer [Marshall DT et al., 2012, J Clin Endocrinol Metab.]. Forty-four

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According to PubMed.gov, there were 3,600 publications with vitamin D in the title or abstract in 2012, bringing the total number of vitamin D publications to 33,800. As a result, vitamin D was the most popular vitamin in 2012.

The following two studies were funded by the Medical University of South Carolina’s (MUSC) South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research Institute (SCTR) and each was chosen as a top 16 vitamin D PubMed.gov paper for 2012 from 60 candidate papers. MUSC’s studies were conducted in SCTR’s Research Nexus, a new resource enhancing translational and patient-oriented research through funding, infrastructure, and expert clinical staffing.

4,000 IU vitamin D3 was of great help during pregnancy

A topic that generated considerable interest this year was the role of vitamin D during pregnancy. In a pair of papers, researchers from MUSC discussed the findings and implications of their randomized controlled trial of vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy [Hollis et al., 2012, Calif Tissue Int.; Wagner et al., 2012, Nutrients]. More than 300 women enrolled in the study

MUSC Researchers Contributed Two of Top 16 Publications for Vitamin D

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patients successfully completed the one-year study. Twenty-four of the subjects (55%) showed a decrease in the amount of cancer; five subjects (11%) showed no change; 15 subjects (34%) showed an increase. Optimal vitamin D supplementation appears to be useful for treating those with cancer.

“We’ve had an encouraging response from the recently published open label study, including making the top 16 vitamin D papers of 2012,” said Sebastiano Gattoni-Celli, M.D., MUSC professor of radiation oncology and health research scientist, Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center. “We were also able to secure federal funds for a much larger randomized study to confirm the benefits of vitamin D supplementation for subjects with low-risk prostate cancer.”

This research was supported by the South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research (SCTR) Institute, with an academic home at the Medical University of South Carolina, through NIH/NCATS UL1 TR000062.

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will delay processing of an award if publications arising from it are not in compliance with the NIH public access policy for non-competing continuation grant awards with a start date of July 1, 2013 or beyond. Investigators will need to use My NCBI to enter papers into progress reports. Papers can be associated electronically using the RPPR, or included in the PHS 2590 using the My NCBI generated PDF report.

To assist the research community with these updates, the NIH Office of Extramural Research posted a training

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webinar to detail the recent changes to the NIH Public Access Policy and provide training on tools to help improve compliance rates for publications. This webinar will help grantee institutions understand the NIH Public Access Policy better and prepare for Upcoming Changes to Public Access Policy Reporting Requirements and Related NIH Efforts to Enhance Compliance (NOT-OD-12-160). It will describe the policy change, provide an overview of My NCBI, a tool investigators use to track and report compliance, describe the Public Access

NIH Public Access Policy Compliance Update

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NIH’s Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) launched The Connector, a new blog featuring OBSSR Director Dr. Robert M. Kaplan’s commentary, Director Connection.

Dr. Kaplan’s blog will explore a broad range of topics such as mHealth, systems science, dissemination and implementation research and the NIH Toolbox.

It will also explore achieving better population health through improved dissemination of

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evidence-based interventions.

The Connector will keep readers informed of the office’s activities, trainings, educational resources and funding opportunity announcements, as well as podcasts and videos of conversations with engaging behavioral and social sciences.

The OBSSR mission is to stimulate and integrate behavioral and social sciences research throughout NIH by improving our understanding, treatment, and prevention of disease.

NIH Launches Blog on Behavioral and Social Sciences research

Bringing behavioral and social sciences research to life

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Compliance Monitor, a web based tool institutions can use to track public access compliance, and advise participants on where to find additional resources and training materials. The training webinar transcript and printable slides can be accessed via this link: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/webinar_docs/webinar_20130115.htm For more information, please contact your assigned Grant Administrator in ORSP or call 843-792-3838.

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Hollings Cancer Center Welcomes New Faculty

Hiu Wing “Tony” Cheung, PhD, an assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, joined MUSC from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Cheung’s research focuses on integrative approaches to characterizing cancer genomes and studying the impact of genetic alterations on a tumor’s response to targeted therapeutics. As part of HCC’s Cancer Genes and Molecular Regulation research program, Dr. Cheung works to identify novel genetic alterations associated with cancer initiation, progression, metastasis, and assessing the functions of these genes.

 Ann-Marie Broome, PhD, joined as director of Molecular Imaging at MUSC’s Center for Biomedical Imaging and director of Small Animal Imaging at Hollings. Molecular imaging is a cross-disciplinary field combining science, engineering and medicine, that bridges basic and clinically-translatable research. Its goal is to characterize and measure biological processes at the cellular and molecular levels. Dr. Broome’s research utilizes bio-inspired nanotechnology to study cancer in its earliest stages of progression. She was recruited from Case Western Reserve University.

shRNA Shared Technology Resource

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Beginning April 1st, the shRNA Shared Resource will provide all investigators at MUSC access to genome wide human and mouse libraries that together encode a total of almost 160,000 shRNA clones against over 41,000 genes. The shared resource utilizes The RNAi Consortium’s (TRC) genome-wide lentiviral mouse and human libraries. Investigators will have the option of ordering shRNA’s targeting single or multiple genes, gene family sets as well as pathway specific pooled libraries. This technology holds tremendous power, and is ready to help investigators at MUSC work toward breakthrough discoveries.

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This link provides more information regarding the shared resource. To inquire about or access the services offered by the shRNA Shared Technology Resources. Please contact David Turner, Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine.

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On March 14-15, MUSC’s Office of Research Development conducted its Grantsmanship Workshop, led by Dr. Israel Goldberg, president of Health Research Associates. Dr. Goldberg spent 13 years in research administration at the NIH prior to becoming an independent consultant.

During the 45-minute meetings, relevant materials were evaluated and discussed with over 20 individual faculty in order to develop a strategy for revising and resubmitting their proposals.

In addition to the private consultations, this Grantsmanship Workshop included meeting with postdoctoral fellows and graduate students who were participants and attendees of the annual National

Grantsmanship Workshop, MUSC Postdoctoral Association, National Post

Doctoral Association Meeting

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Postdoctoral Association (NPA) meeting, held this year at MUSC from March 15-17.

In Dr. Goldberg’s meeting described here, he addressed the philosophy of grant writing, how to get started, and what it takes to be successful in obtaining independent funding.

The Grantsmanship Workshop being held during the NPA annual conference proved to be very beneficial, as the NPA is the national voice for postdoctoral scholars.

The National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) is a non-profit organization that provides a unique, national voice for postdoctoral scholars. Since 2003, they have taken on the ambitious agenda to enhance the quality of the postdoctoral experience in the U.S.

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The NPA has assumed a leadership role in addressing the many issues confronting the postdoctoral community that are national in scope and requiring action beyond the local level.

For more information on the MUSC Postdoctoral Association, please contact Michelle Nelson (nelsonmh@musc.edu) or Ed Krug (krugel@musc.edu).