IUPUI is Indiana's premier urban research university. The campus enrolls more than 30,000 students in 21 schools and academic units.
Mark Kelley
IU Simon Cancer Center
mkelley@iupui.edu
ITRAC; IU Simon Cancer Center Translation Research Acceleration Collab
IndyStar.com Business December 18, 2007 Business model helps coordinate research By Chuck Bowen Star correspondent Researchers and doctors long have faced the specter of "chemo brain," which affects about half of all cancer patients. Its symptoms can include partial loss of memory or cognitive function and tingling in the hands and feet. It is serious enough to force some patients to discontinue otherwise successful treatment. "We don't know the underlying mechanics in that," said Mark Kelley, associate director for basic science research at Indiana University's Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center."How are you going to treat it if you don't know?" Kelley and a team of pharmacologists, psychologists and physicians have been striving to unlock the secrets of "chemo brain," as well as possible cures for the disease itself. But they realized their efforts often were disconnected from related research at IU and other institutions. So, a year ago, administrators and researchers at the center looked to the business world and the local life-sciences sector for a model to help organize research efforts and increase efficiency at translating successful lab work into profitable businesses. The result is the IU Translational Research Acceleration Collaboration. Essentially, ITRAC is a group of administrators who help map out and fund projects of the cancer center's 150 researchers. In a year, they have handed out about $500,000."(ITRAC is) a business approach. It's an approach that Lilly, Pfizer and Roche use every day for project management," said David Johnson, chief executive at BioCrossroads and an ITRAC advisory board member. "That's a very different approach to research from the norm." The program aims to break down what Kelley calls "silo-based research." IU administrators approached BioCrossroads for help in setting up the program and hired Mary Murray, who had been working as a project manager at Eli Lilly and Co., as its translational coordinator. By applying the Six Sigma total quality management approach to the center's projects, Murray and her team help scientists organize research -- and stay focused on their work. ITRAC now has mapped more than 70 projects, and the maps used to organize research have been used to get funding. Six projects have applied for patents, and one area of research has a potential license under evaluation. "I get a broad sense of a lot of projects, so I'm able to help move forward a lot. They really need to be at the bend doing the science," Murray said. "You're basically adding to a team to get more bang for your buck." By bringing together researchers who otherwise might not have worked together, ITRAC also tries to offer new perspectives on research and identify potential bottlenecks. For instance, Kelley said researchers discovered that many of their experiments required a special high-powered microscope and that they needed to hire more technicians to do toxicity screenings. "So let's get it built. Let's get it ready, so the investigators don't miss a beat," he said, "rather than hitting a brick wall (and) all of a sudden the project grinds to a halt." One beneficiary of the program is Brittney-Shea Herbert. She studies telomerase, an enzyme that prevents chromosomes from aging. Through ITRAC, she works with clinicians, a pathologist and other investigators to better understand how certain drugs work to fight cancer. "(ITRAC) helps us find collaborators around campus to help us," she said. "It's like standing on the pedestal and looking down and seeing the whole congregation." The emphasis on organization also helped Herbert when she applied for -- and won -- a $120,000 grant from the Department of Defense. Kelley said the ITRAC program has been opened to researchers at Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame. "We're uniting the cancer researchers in Indiana, so the money's being used the most efficient way to treat and cure cancer," he said.
