Collaborative Grants Encourage UNC and Duke Researchers to Leave Rivalry on the Court

This time of year, in this part of the state, rivalry seems to be in the air. People show their allegiances in varying shades of blue, and cross their fingers that the team down the road doesn’t make it further than theirs in the NCAA Tournament. Despite the ubiquitous nature of March Madness, there are places where collaboration, not competition, is rewarded.

The North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute and the Duke University Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Programs recently awarded the second round of $50,000 translational research pilot grants to four teams with investigators from both UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke.

The grants are part of an effort to promote inter-institutional collaborations that can turn basic scientific discoveries into advances in patient care. Such collaborations can help accelerate the pace of research by granting more investigators expanded access to resources, expertise, and patient populations.

“A little healthy competition never hurt anyone, but tackling the major problems that affect our society today requires that we put aside our differences and work together toward a common goal,” said John Buse, MD, PhD, director of NC TraCS, UNC’s CTSA. “UNC and Duke have a long history of collaboration, and these awards were designed to encourage more researchers to think about how teaming up to bring about improvements in the understanding and treatment of human disease.”

The winning proposals were varied and wide-ranging. They included designing an innovative technology to discover new drugs, using genetics to define trends in HIV drug resistance, testing ways to optimize transfusion therapy in sickle cell disease, and exploring a new mechanism to prevent blood clots in pancreatic cancer. Four of the 30 grant applications were ultimately funded.

“We are so fortunate to have two outstanding research institutions within close proximity,” said Ebony Boulware, MD, co-director of Duke’s CTSA. “When our talented scientists cross institutional boundaries and join forces to collaborate in team science, we are seeing the impact of our collective research efforts amplified several fold. The collaborative pilot programs provide a wonderful model for this team approach and has yielded impressive biomedical advances.”

The following are the four projects awarded in this round:

Project Title: Scalable In Vitro Technology for Profiling GPCR signaling for Novel Drug Discovery
Robert Lefkowitz, MD, Professor, Medicine, Duke School of Medicine
Bryan Roth, MD, PhD, Professor, Pharmacology, UNC School of Medicine

Project Title: Defining HIV Transmitted Drug Resistance Trends in North Carolina with Phylogenetics
Ann Dennis, MD, Assistant Professor, Medicine-Infectious Diseases, UNC School of Medicine
Nwora Lance Okeke, MD, Assistant Professor, Medicine-Infectious Diseases, Duke School of Medicine

Project Title: RBC Rejuvenation to Optimize Chronic Transfusion Therapy in Sickle Cell Disease
Jay Raval, MD, Assistant Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, UNC School of Medicine
Ian Welsby, MB BS, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Duke School of Medicine

Project Title: Targeting the Intrinsic Pathway of Coagulation to Prevent Venous Thrombosis in Pancreatic Cancer
Nigel Mackman, PhD, Professor, Medicine, UNC School of Medicine
Rebekah White, MD, Associate Professor, Surgery, Duke School of Medicine

“The Duke Translational Research Institute (DTRI) is very excited to begin working with four new Duke-UNC translational research teams,” said Bruce Sullenger, PhD, director of the Duke Translational Research Institute, which runs the Duke side of this pilot program. “The quality and number of high impact, translational projects coming from this CTSA supported inter-institutional pilot program is impressive and bodes well for the future of biomedical research in our region.”

UNC and Duke are both members of the Clinical and Translational Awards (CTSA) program, a national consortium created to improve the way biomedical research is conducted across the country. The CTSA program is funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).