IDDRC Clinical Translational Core

The Clinical Translational Core (CTC) provides a comprehensive set of services designed to enhance the impact and rigor of clinical translational research on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD). Select services are novel and unavailable outside of the CTC; other services increase research efficiency and enhance quality control over study activities common to all clinical translational research. Freeing individual Intellectual and Developmental Disability Research Center users of the burden of common activities in turn allows users to better deploy resources for innovation and maximize their translational science. CTC services fall into four areas:

Recruitment & Cohort Selection Sub-core

• Led by Whitney Guthrie, PhD
• Assistance with assembling suitably large study cohorts to support rigorous, well-powered research.
• Support all phases of IRB and IND protocol preparation, submission and response to stipulations; and provide concierge services for other freely available research supports already on campus, such as services offered by CHOP’s Clinical Trials office, and services provided by the Penn/CHOP CTSA.

Phenotying Sub-core

• Led by Juhi Pandey, PhD
• Expert clinical assessment support, including support with conventional psychological measurement; computable phenotypes from bioinformatic analyses of the electronic health records; and novel digital phenotyping using computer vision and computational linguistics to achieve granular measurement of speech, language, and observable behaviors (e.g., nonverbal facial expressions and synchrony between individuals during interactions).

Data Management, Integration, and Sharing Sub-core

• Led by Ben Yerys, PhD
• Creation of study specific interactive databases and visualization tools that allow labs to track their study progress, efficiently allocate resources and effort, and prepare study reports and data submissions (e.g., NIMH Data Archive).