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The Collaborative
Studies Coordinating Center (CSCC) in the Department of Biostatistics, Gillings
School of Global Public Health, was selected to serve as the Genomics and
Informatics Center (GIC) for the SubPopulations and InteRmediate Outcome Measures
in COPD Study (SPIROMICS). SPIROMICS supports
the prospective collection and analysis of phenotypic, biomarker, genetic,
genomic, and clinical data from subjects with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
(COPD) for the purpose of identifying patient subpopulations and surrogate
markers for use in future clinical trials. The study is funded by the National
Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH). The CSCC contract spans seven
years, and the total award is $8,192,632.
This award represents a successful pan-campus effort, with contributing
faculty from the CSCC and Department of Biostatistics, the Departments of
Medicine and of Bioinformatics in the School of Medicine (SOM), and the School of Information and Library Science
(SILS). Dr. Lisa LaVange, Director of
the CSCC and Professor of the Practice of Biostatistics, is the Principal
Investigator of the GIC.
Co-Investigators include Drs. Richard Boucher, Claire Doerschuk, Wanda
O'Neil in SOM, Drs. Fred Wright and Wei Sun in Biostatistics, and Drs. Jane
Greenberg and Javed Mostafa in SILs. Regarding this new collaboration, Dr. Lavange said,
"The results from this study have the potential
to rapidly accelerate the development of new therapies for COPD and its
clinical subtypes. We are very excited
to be working with colleagues from all across the UNC-CH campus in this
exciting and important study."
In addition to UNC-CH, awards were made to six clinical centers (Columbia University,
University of California
at Los Angeles, University
of California at San
Francisco, University of Michigan, University
of Utah, and Wake
Forest University)
and a radiology center (University
of Iowa). Subjects will be enrolled at each of the
clinical centers, undergo molecular fingerprinting and extensive phenotyping at
a baseline clinical examination, and be followed for three years to identify
disease outcomes. The clinical and
molecular data will be analyzed to determine homogeneous patient subgroups and to
identify and validate surrogate markers of disease severity which will be
useful as intermediate outcome measures for future therapeutic clinical trials.
Secondary aims are to clarify the natural history of COPD, to develop
bioinformatics resources that will enable the utilization and sharing of data
in studies of COPD and related diseases, and to create a collection of
clinical, biomarker, radiographic, and genetic data that can be used by
external investigators for other studies of COPD.
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