Researchers at the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) have received a major federal grant to study how multisite clinical trials of new drugs and therapies in children and adults can be conducted more rapidly and efficiently.
The seven-year, $26.5 million grant for a joint Trial Innovation Center (TIC) is supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The center will be a key component of the Trial Innovation Network, which is the newest part of the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program.
Danny Benjamin MD, MPH, PhD, faculty associate director of the DCRI, and Gordon Bernard, MD, director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (VICTR), are the grant’s principal investigators.
“The DCRI and Vanderbilt partnership is a perfect fit for the TIC,” said Benjamin. “The academic research organization model at the DCRI and Vanderbilt’s informatics and central institutional review board model are poised to immediately contribute to the NIH’s vision of high-functioning networks for clinical research.”
“We are excited about the opportunity to be on the ground floor of building a new infrastructure for the efficient conduct of high-quality clinical research that has a major impact on human health,” said Bernard, executive vice president for research at VUMC.