Rheumatic Diseases Research Training Grant

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT This application requests five additional years for the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Training Grant in Rheumatology to continue to fulfill its goal of preparing pre- and post-doctoral fellows for careers as independent investigators in academia, conducting cutting-edge basic and/or translational rheumatology disease-related research. We are requesting 3 postdoctoral training slots (for MD, MD/PhD, MD/MPH, and/or PhD researchers in bench laboratory or clinical-translational investigation), and 3 slots for predoctoral students (for dual MD/PhD and/or single PhD students, all to be trained in basic-translational research in the UCSD/La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (LJI) Biomedical sciences Program in Immunology). The training program will consist of a research experience typically of 24 months, and up to 36 months. We re-imagined and re-energized our program by implementing a series of innovations for this renewal application that allow us to prepare our trainees for the research workforce of tomorrow. Rather than traditional research approaches, we will embed critical skills like team science, community engagement and dissemination and implementation science into each trainee project. The 48-participating faculty will build multi-disciplinary training teams that will include in this cycle a clinical or basic research mentor, one computational mentor, together with one Rheumatology clinician and one junior mentor-in-training for all trainees. This will emphasize collaboration, help nurture translational thinking and team science in the trainees, help access patient cohorts and samples, and develop the mentoring skills of junior faculty. This exposure to “team science” together with the mandatory coursework will help the trainees learn how to interact with colleagues, and share in the contributions and credit for interesting research programs. Of important note, to address health disparities and unmet needs, this program will focus on bi-directional communication between trainees and the community, will include a community member on the mentor team, will embed interactions with the community in planning studies and assessing impacts, as well as a Dissemination and Implementation plan. To promote creation of multi-disciplinary research teams, we have added new well-funded, outstanding primary mentors, with a strong emphasis on diversity and leaders focused on population science and community engagement. We have also re-organized our program around 2 major themes integrated with our central focus on translational rheumatic diseases research that represent strengths in our research community: (1) Translational Immunology, Joint Biology, Mucosal Immunobiology and Metabiomics, and (2) Epidemiology, Biomedical Informatics and Computational Biology. We will also emphasize recruiting and training outstanding independent researchers who help develop evidence-based treatments in routine care and expand collaboration with our community to improve health dissemination in the community.