The University of New Mexico and The University of Arizona win joint $43.6 million NIH award to help turn clinical research into practical medicine

The University of New Mexico (UNM) and The University of Arizona (U of A) are collaborating in a seven-year, $43.6 million federal grant to fund a broad range of research programs aimed at improving the health of people living in New Mexico and Arizona and training a new generation of scientists and staff.

The Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences will fund the new Southwest Center for Advancing Clinical & Translational Innovation (SW CACTI), said Hengameh Raissy, PharmD, vice president for research at the UNM Health Sciences Center (HSC).

“As an academic health center, our research advances public health with innovative approaches and supports economic growth in New Mexico,” she said. “The driving force behind our success is the unwavering dedication of our faculty. We are very grateful to every single one of them, and in this CTSA cycle, we are looking forward to working with University of Arizona to train future workforce and translational scientists as we address common health challenges across the Southwest.”

Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, senior vice president for research and partnerships at the U of A, said the university is excited to leverage its clinical and research strengths in the new partnership with UNM. “Our long history of academic and research collaboration promises to bring innovative programs and medical advances to improve the lives of people across both states,” he said.

The primary award, for approximately $38.8 million over seven years, will provide funding to support translational science, which helps biomedical advances more rapidly reach patients and communities. An additional $4.8 million K12 Research Training and Career Development Award will be shared with Arizona’s Banner Health, a nonprofit health care system with both urban and rural hospitals and other facilities.

SW CACTI builds on UNM’s extensive experience with CTSA support for translational research. Since 2010, a CTSA has funded the UNM Clinical & Translational Science Center, and until now UNM has been the only CTSA site in New Mexico and Arizona. 

A CTSA hub at the U of A and the state of Arizona is long overdue, said Sally Radovick, MD, U of A’s principal investigator. “The partnership provides critical resources and support for translational research in a range of areas, such as clinical trial recruitment, medical data access and community engagement.”

A partnership between the two universities makes sense for many reasons, Radovick said.

“Arizona shares a lot of commonalities with New Mexico,” she said. “Both states have significant Native American and rural populations. We share common problems with health care delivery. A partnership extends the breadth of UNM’s CTSA programs and expertise. We’ve now more than doubled the number of clinical trials that investigators can take part in and that are open to the populations of both states.”

Basic biomedical research — “bench science” — needs to be translated from the laboratory to the clinic so that it can benefit patient health, said Matthew Campen, PhD, MSPH, Distinguished Professor in the UNM College of Pharmacy and UNM multiple principal investigator of SW CACTI.

“One purpose of our center is to really provide the basic sciences faculty with the tools that they need to move their discoveries to reality for clinical medicine,” he said, adding that it entails disseminating successfully translated discoveries into communities and informing physicians about the latest developments.

SW CACTI will also help other UNM researchers by providing research tools and infrastructure in areas such as biostatistics, epidemiology and research design, he said.

UNM and U of A each bring multiple strengths to this partnership, Campen said.

“Our team brings a lot of experience of having run a center like this for the past 15 years, maybe longer, if you consider some of the earlier iterations,” he said. “We have a very cohesive unit, a lot of strength in our collegiality and collaborative nature here.”

The new CTSA hub speaks highly of the expertise, experience and commitment of clinicians, faculty and staff at the U of A, said Jennifer Barton, PhD, U of A interim vice provost for health programs. “The CTSA grant will impact our ability to address significant health problems across both states and enable new research opportunities and collaborations locally, regionally and across the National Institutes of Health (NIH) network.”

To tackle the science necessary to lead to new breakthroughs, SW CACTI will award pilot funds to researchers who have an approved project, said Nancy Pandhi, MD, PhD, MPH, Professor in Family & Community Medicine and UNM HSC assistant vice president of research for Clinical Translational Research who serves as SW CACTI’s contact principal investigator.

Half of the pilot projects will be done solely at either UNM or U of A, she said.

“The other half will actually require both institutions to work together, so you’ll have investigators collaborating,” Pandhi said. “That’s another exciting opportunity. They’re thinking with and across their different partners and bringing them together to improve the science and relevance.”

“The CTSA program strengthens us as an academic institution,” said Patricia Prelock, U of A provost and chief academic officer. “It brings new resources for our faculty and students to expand their clinical research experiences, setting the stage for career growth and opportunities.”

Two initial areas of joint focus for SW CACTI researchers will be on substance use disorders and rural health initiatives.

The team of translational scientists will start by studying the rollout of a new addiction consult service at UNM Hospital, New Mexico’s only tertiary care provider and Level I trauma center, Pandhi said.

Among other outcomes, they will evaluate whether the new service leads more people with opioid use disorder to follow up with outpatient care after they leave the hospital. The lessons learned from this first study will be compared to those when partnering with a rural hospital.

“Implementing and disseminating health care strategies to rural areas are important CTSA priorities,” Radovick said. “Both Arizona and New Mexico are dealing with an opioid use crisis and there’s an initiative between the two states to extend opioid care to rural hospitals. That includes a program to promote knowledge about opioid addiction treatment. Our plan is to provide additional opportunities for clinicians and practitioners to have access to addiction programs and medications.”

Training new researchers and staff in translational science is a major priority for SW CACTI. Both universities will be able to make a significant contribution in this area.

The U of A and UNM each will have five positions to train early career scientists in translational research each year over the life of the five-year K12 Research Training and Career Development Award. SW CACTI also plans to submit a T32 grant application to the NIH to support research training for predoctoral and postdoctoral candidates in clinical and translational science.

“We’re building an academic and community workforce through new training programs,” Radovick said. “Supporting early stage clinical and translational researchers is critical to building healthier populations in both states.”

UNM will contribute its extensive experience in mentoring early career scientists through its longstanding NIH-funded KL2 program. It also will expand the Clinical and Translational Research Experience program, which informs and inspires undergraduate students across the Southwest who are curious about careers as research staff.

UNM and U of A will track the results of their efforts over time in four areas: economic, policy, clinical and public health benefits.

“We publish reports that show that benefit, and our plan is to have those available publicly so people can really see the return on this investment,” Pandhi said.