Yale Clinical Research Centers

Yale has three NIH-supported Clinical Research Centers (CRCs):

• General Clinical Research Center (GCRC)
• Children's Clinical Research Center (CCRC)
• Mental Health Clinical Research Center (MHCRC)

These CRCs have been continuously funded for forty-one, thirty-eight and twenty-three years, respectively. These CRCs provide the infrastructure for Yale faculty to conduct meritorious patient-oriented research. Post-doctoral fellows are active on the CRCs while obtaining training in patient-oriented research.

Beyond their roles as important venues for the conduct of patient-oriented research, these CRCs provide an invaluable infrastructure for training future investigators in patient-oriented research. A Training Program in Clinical Investigation was established at Yale in 1983, funded by a NIH Institutional Training Grant. This program is interdepartmental, interdisciplinary, and devoted to providing research training in patient-oriented research. The training program consists of a core curriculum and preceptor-directed, hypothesis-driven research, frequently involving the 3 Yale CRCs: the GCRC, CCRC, and MHCRC.

In addition, the Clinical Associate Physician (CAP) award offered by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) provides funding for up to 5 years for the development of young investigators in patient-oriented research. Both the GCRC and CCRC, which are supported by the NCRR, can nominate and appoint physician-investigators as Clinical Associate Physicians (CAP). These CAP awards, which are competitive on a national level, provide salary support and protected time to facilitate continued training in patient-oriented research for advanced post-doctoral fellows or junior faculty. Most of the CAP activities involve their respective CRCs. During the past twenty years, the GCRC and CCRC have had seven and three CAP awardees, respectively. All but one of these former CAP awardees presently have full-time academic positions, while 75% have maintained NIH research funding. Currently, there is one CAP awardee on the GCRC and one on the CCRC. The success of the CAP awardees provides further support for the outstanding training environment in patient-oriented research at Yale.

General Clinical Research Center (GCRC)

The General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) at Yale University School of Medicine and Yale-New Haven Hospital has been competitively renewed by the NIH through 2006. Currently, the GCRC has 99 active protocols with 68 different principal investigators. The GCRC integrates personnel, physical facilities, laboratory and computer resources to provide Yale faculty in different disciplines with the resources to conduct patient-oriented research. These resources include: a newly renovated seven-bed inpatient unit along with new outpatient facilities, a core laboratory, a Nutrition Unit (i.e. a metabolic kitchen), a biostatistician and a new GCRC supported Informatics Core-Operations Unit which is shared with the Yale CCRC.

Yale faculty conduct protocols in multiple areas of interests, with primary emphasis directed toward diabetes, carbohydrate and fat metabolism, bone disease and calcium metabolism, and neuroscience/psychiatry including drug abuse. New GCRC initiatives include a major expansion in the number of off site NMR/MRI studies involving several new GCRC investigators, establishment of a new Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Center for the Study of Hypoglycemia, an NIH sponsored Musculoskeletal Center, and expansion of the Yale Diabetes-Endocrine Research Center to support human studies. The GCRC serves as an extremely valuable resource in the training of future clinical investigators.

Contact information—Phone (203) 688-6846

http://info.med.yale.edu/crc

Children's Clinical Research Center (CCRC)

The Children's Clinical Research Center (CCRC), which has been operating since 1964, permits the faculty of the Departments of Pediatrics, Child Study Center, Psychiatry, Surgery, Genetics and Internal Medicine, and their trainees, to conduct clinical investigation in children. The Yale CCRC consists of five inpatient beds, outpatient facilities, a consultation room and reception area, office space, skilled research nurses and other personnel to support these resources. The Center provides the environment for studies of normal and abnormal psychosocial implications of organic disease in this age group.

Currently, the CCRC has 61 active protocols with 103 different investigators. Major issues of investigation include innovative approaches in achieving and maintaining optimal control of diabetes in children and adolescents; investigations into the immunopathogenesis of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus; effects of obesity, normal puberty and diabetes on insulin action and secretion; factors that influence language development and cognitive function in healthy children and children with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder; evaluation of efficacy and long-term outcome of surgical treatment of childhood epilepsy; the phenomenology and neurobiology of Tourette's syndrome, childhood autism and other neuropsychiatric disorders; the effects of in utero cocaine and other drug exposure on neurobehavioral development of infants and children; and state-of-the-art advances in the treatment of the critically ill neonate. Under the aegis of the CCRC, the newly developed Pediatric Pharmacology Research Unit, funded by more than $1.3 million in grants, will support research in clinical trials and pharmacogenetics in pediatric patients. Thus, the CCRC provides an outstanding training environment in patient-oriented research.

Contact information—Phone (203) 688-4789

http://info.med.yale.edu/crc