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Inflammation and the Host Response to Injury is a large-scale collaborative research program supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a division of the National Institutes of Health. Our NIH investigators agreed that the most important biological problem to tackle in the area of injury research centered on the innate inflammatory response, and specifically, to improve our systems level understanding of the key regulatory elements, and their relative roles and importance that drive the host's response to serious injury and its accompanying severe systemic inflammation

The problem could only be addressed by first acquiring large amounts of new data ("discovery-driven approach"). It was evident to our participating investigators that our limited success in developing appropriate therapeutic interventions for the treatment of the severe trauma or burn injured patient has been the result of an incomplete understanding of the integrated host response to injury. The excitement of the group focused on our potential to pay attention to experimental detail and data gathering capacity along with the potential to derive greater accuracy and informational content in ever smaller and more enriched samples, and to ultimately introduce genome-wide microarray technologies and high throughput proteomics to clinical medicine. Such an improved understanding would lead to genomic and proteomic markers that predict ultimate outcomes both good and bad, and would suggest new targets for further basic and clinical research, as well as fruitful targets for pharmacological and immunomodulatory interventions.

We continue our work towards reaching our Program deliverables and contributions, which should include: (1) a well-annotated clinical database of rich genomic and proteomic information; (2) new technology for application in clinical studies (microfluidic cell separations, novel custom gene chip); (3) novel bioinformational, statistical and pathway analysis tools for the exploration of the genomic and proteomic data; and (4) gene sets with high predictability of multiple organ failure and other clinical trajectories.

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Glue Grant Publications

A full listing of articles published based on Glue Grant research from its inception in 2001 until the present is now available. Click on the following link for a list of these publications. <Publications list - MS Word document>


The Trauma-Related Database Concept

One of the principal products or deliverables of our planned 10-year award, the Trauma Related Database (TRDB) is a large, relational database warehouse containing clinical, proteomic, cell biology, and gene expression data from our trauma and burns patients and healthy control subject studies. The TRDB provides a browser interface for downloading complete datasets, and more importantly, user-selected data subsets.  Data can be downloaded as tables (i.e., relational format) and as binary or text files for use in various data analysis applications.  Refinements to enhance the query and report-writing capabilities of TRDB are also a component of our funded research program. 

The program data warehoused in TRDB undergoes a vigorous process of scientific annotation, validation, and curation to insure that the data are of maximum usefulness to the scientific community. Access to the curated data in TRDB is available now to our Consortium Members to meet the NIH requirements of timely and responsible release of data.
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