Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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CTSA

NIH director visits Emory, Atlanta Clinical & Translational Science Institute

David Stephens, MD, Jim Wagner, PhD, Earl Lewis, PhD, Francis Collins, MD, PhD

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and chief of staff Dr. Kathy Hudson, paid a daylong visit to Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center, including Yerkes National Primate Research Center, and Morehouse School of Medicine on April 14.

The purpose of Collins’ visit was to view the activities of the Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute, one of 46 national CTSAs funded by the NIH through the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR).  Collins also will visit CTSAs at Duke, UNC, and Vanderbilt in the future.

Collins asked that his visit focus on “how CTSAs are enabling science.” It was an opportunity for the ACTSI, a partnership among Emory, Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia Institute of Technology and others, including Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Georgia Research Alliance, Georgia BIO, Kaiser Permanente, CDC, the Atlanta VA Medical Center and the Grady Health System, to showcase the unique contributions the ACTSI makes to enabling clinical and translational research.

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Posted on April 21, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Gaining better medicine in translation

 

David Stephens, MD

David Stephens, MD

Translational research has traditionally been thought of as the process of moving a discovery in one direction – from the laboratory to the patient. More recently, though, researchers have recognized the importance of community engagement in the biomedical discovery process. That’s because involving the community makes for better medical care for patients.

The Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute (ACTSI) is a partnership of educational, research, and health care institutions that involves the community in clinical research that translates laboratory discoveries into advanced treatments for patients. The ACTSI is part of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) of the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) of the National Institutes of Health.

The ACTSI’s goal of supporting more effective clinical and translational research has led to a broader definition of translation: discovering what new healthcare tools, diagnostic tests and therapies a community needs and then taking that information back to the laboratory or conducting clinical research to find ways to meet those needs.

David Stephens, MD, is principal investigator of the ACTSI. Stephens says community engagement brings together leaders who discuss the health care needs of their respective communities. Researchers can then periodically meet with leaders, and let them know what progress is being made in the laboratory.

The ACTSI also brings together laboratory scientists with clinical investigators, community clinicians, professional societies and industry collaborators in a wide variety of research projects.

The ACTSI is led by Emory University, along with Morehouse School of Medicine, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and Kaiser Permanente Georgia. Other partners include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Grady Health System, the Georgia Research Alliance, Georgia Bio, the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the American Cancer Society.

To hear Stephens’ own words about translational research and the ACTSI, listen to Emory University’s Sound Science podcast.

Posted on September 1, 2009 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment