Beyond finger tapping: how a Wright Center K12 scholar is rethinking Parkinson’s testing
Supported by a CTSA-funded K12 award from the Wright Regional Center for Clinical and Translational Science, occupational therapy researcher Brooke Dexheimer, Ph.D., O.T.D., is investigating how subtle differences in dominant and non-dominant hand function could lead to more sensitive clinical testing for Parkinson’s disease. During her clinical rotations as an occupational therapy student, Brooke Dexheimer, […]
VCU researchers launch ‘PITT Stop’ to help clinical investigators beat administrative bottlenecks
Supported by a $25,000 pilot award from the Wright Regional Center for Clinical and Translational Science, the new PITT Stop training platform officially launches Oct. 21 to help health care investigators navigate complex administrative hurdles. When Richard K. Sterling, M.D., M.Sc., professor of hepatology and assistant dean of clinical research at the VCU School of […]
How a small NIH pilot at VCU helped launch a precision medicine company
A seed grant through the Wright Center offered crucial support for TACIT — an AI tool for reading human tissue cell by cell — and catalyzed a spinout that has since expanded to build virtual tissues for precision medicine. The human body is not flat. It is a crowded, three-dimensional world, built from trillions of […]
Why don’t pain treatments work? Naomi Carter hopes to find out
The VCU M.D.-Ph.D. student has advanced from the Wright Center’s T32 training grant to her own NIH fellowship, developing new ways to measure pain that could help close the gap between the lab and the clinic. Naomi Carter has a mission, and she’ll tell you exactly what it is. “My mission is to improve how […]
Nina Dashti-Gibson is researching pancreatic cancer and bringing science to the community
The M.D.-Ph.D. student believes combining medicine and research will help her make the largest impact. She was honored in the spring for her work on an art project that built cancer awareness in the Richmond area. Nina Dashti-Gibson came to cancer research by following a question with few clear answers. As an M.D.-Ph.D. student in […]
Gevick Safarians is building tiny worlds to fight a deadly cancer
The M.D.-Ph.D. student is using microfluidic chips to simulate the environments metastatic prostate cancer travels through — and to find the chinks in its armor. Gevick Safarians remembers the conversations. Patients dealing with cancer and other diseases with very poor prognoses, hoping not for years but for months — a little more time to settle […]
Hannah Stadtler completes her Ph.D. with a mission to understand HIV and the brain
Her research was propelled by a Wright Center biomedical sciences initiative, and her M.D. is next as she continues in VCU’s Medical Scientist Training Program.
VCU and Central Virginia VA receive $1.2 million NIH grant to train scholars in big data medicine
The five-year training award, a complementary grant to VCU’s $27.5 million Clinical and Translational Science Award, will support postdoctoral fellows who will work with federal healthcare datasets covering millions of veterans, service members and civilians. Virginia Commonwealth University and the Central Virginia Veterans Affairs Health Care System have received a five-year T32 Ruth L. Kirschstein […]
Here’s how VCU researchers are reviving the house call to treat teen obesity
Led by Melanie K. Bean, Ph.D.—co-lead of Resources and Services at VCU’s Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research—a $3.85M NIH trial is testing telehealth as a means to bring effective treatment for teen obesity into homes. This study leverages Wright Center expertise in its research design.
Multidisciplinary VCU Team Awarded CCTR Endowment Fund Grant to Investigate Accelerated Brain Aging
A multidisciplinary VCU research team has been awarded a multi-school CCTR Endowment Fund grant from the C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research to investigate the root causes of accelerated brain aging. The project — “Investigating astrocytes as agents of accelerated brain aging from a neurodevelopmental perspective” — is led by […]
