The UNC Core Center for Clinical Research: Phenotyping and Precision Medicine Resource Core

RESOURCE CORE ABSTRACT The overall goal of the UNC CCCR is to enhance the design and conduct of clinical studies in Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Diseases (RMDs) with a focus on osteoarthritis (OA), a particular strength of our research community. Unfortunately, RMDs remain a major burden to patients and society. Many RMDs are rare, and even those that are common, such as OA, are so heterogeneous that no effective therapies have yet been identified. Improved understanding of subgroups within RMDs, and individualized management targeted to these groups, is needed to improve the health of our patents. The proposed Resource Core will provide critical services around advanced phenotyping and precision medicine in RMDs, as well as a new, high value dataset, to our research community. The aims for this new proposal are directly informed by experience in our current, highly successful CCCR, the needs of the field, and a needs assessment of our research community. Aim 1 will allow development and characterization of a high value, real-world dataset for advanced, large scale phenotyping and precision medicine research in collaboration with two partner CCCRs. In Aim 2, we will continue to provide consultative services for phenotyping and precision medicine analyses for our research community in OA and other RMDs as we have successfully done in the current CCCR. Recognizing the need for additional training and education in these areas for early and established investigators, we will work to enhance educational opportunities around real-world big data in RMDs in Aim 3, with a focus on inter-disciplinary collaboration. A key aspect of the success of our CCCR to date has been interaction and collaboration among methodologists learning RMD science and among RMD clinical researchers learning from methodologists, leading to overall better science. The proposed Resource Core will meet the needs of our research community and provide services that are both unique and necessary to enhance and stimulate research in phenotyping and precision medicine for OA and other RMDs. We have engaged in a collaborative process to develop this proposal and will continue to engage across our community and other CCCRs. We will leverage existing data and classification pipelines, adding value to these while building on this foundation with our group’s sophisticated methodologies and extensive content area expertise. The renewed UNC CCCR Resource Core will utilize innovative strategies to leverage data science and novel statistical tools to move the field of OA and other RMD phenotyping and precision medicine forward in a meaningful and collaborative way, leveraging our expertise to provide services to our research community to improve clinical research and patient care.