Thursday, December 26, 2024
12/26/2024
In this application, we propose continued funding to the Dartmouth Cystic Fibrosis Training Program (DCFTP). Continuing support is sought for a comprehensive, highly interactive, interdepartmental training program with an emphasis on CF basic and translational science. The overall philosophy of the program is to use a disease-centered approach to teach fundamental concepts of basic and translational science in the context of a dynamic, multidisciplinary research and team-based mentoring environment. In this submission, we propose to directly fund 4 Trainees annually. Our program has pooled the talents of 22 dedicated Faculty Trainers from a wide range of departments—our current program includes faculty in the departments of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chemistry, Molecular Systems Biology, Medicine, Microbiology/ Immunology, Epidemiology, Pediatrics, and Engineering—to provide instruction in CF-related research to PhD and MD/PhD students. The DCFTP will function in the context of a Research Base already rich in basic, translational, and clinical CF-related studies. The CF research program at Dartmouth has grown from three investigators and one NIH grant in 1997 to a community of world-class scientists that currently secure $21.1M per year in direct costs of research funding ($0.96M per investigator average). Dartmouth will also provide ~$39.6M in institutional support, including direct support to DartCF, our training program and the affiliated graduate programs, over the next 5 years. Our Training Faculty use approaches including the study of clinical cohorts, quantitative methods, and laboratory-based and animal studies; thus, our trainees are exposed to a broad range of scientific strategies to answer impactful scientific questions. The DCFTP participating Training Faculty, which include PhD, MD, and MD/PhD researchers, work in a range of disciplines, with CF research as the central focus; all Training Faculty conduct research, are well funded, and teach and mentor our Trainees. This group of basic and physician-scientist researchers is actively engaged in CF-related research, with expertise in cell biology, structural biology, microbiology, immunology, microbiome, genetics, bioinformatics, statistics, and proteomics. A hallmark of our program is the close and consistent interaction of our Training Faculty with our DCFTP Trainees via DCFTP-sponsored general and Trainee-specific activities, including weekly research meetings, courses, journal clubs, and our annual retreat. Training-grant funds and DCFTP- sponsored, Trainee-specific enhanced activities provide a unifying base that greatly facilitates the strikingly interactive nature of this group (evidenced by 38 collaborative publications over the past ~5 years among our 22 Training and 9 Affiliated Faculty) and of the collaborative grants held by these faculty.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).