University of Pennsylvania | School of Medicine | Translational Research Center

CTRC Home

The Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) was formed with the receipt of the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), an NIH Roadmap initiative. The CTRC has child and adult specific components at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS), respectively, as well as joint components. The CTRC merged the General Clinical Research Centers (GCRCs) at both institutions, as well as introduced new programs and services.

The goal of the CTRC is to provide the resources, environment, operations, and training to support and promote high-quality clinical and translational research by qualified investigators.

The CTRC program supports outpatient facilities and designated inpatient beds, managed by nurses with extensive experience in clinical research. A scatterbed nursing program provides research nursing personnel for the study of patients who cannot be seen in the standard CTRC facilities. A Nutrition Assessment Unit to conduct growth and body composition measurements and human energy expenditure assessments also exists.

Extensive services are provided by the Core Laboratory staff for specimen collection and processing, as well as the performance of non-routine laboratory assays. Lab subcores include the Specimen Collection/Point of Care Testing/Sample Disposition Lab, Molecular Biology and Cell Culture Labs, and the Biochemistry/Genetics Lab.

Other CTRC core services include the following:

Sleep research core with designated sleep beds and technical staff;
Cardiovascular core to facilitate clinical and translational research in cardiovascular physiology, pathophysiology, and imaging;
Pulmonary core to facilitate clinical and translational research in pulmonary physiology, pathophysiology, and imaging;
Behavioral Neuroscience core to provide infrastructure to both support and promote behaviorally oriented research;
Translational and Clinical Trial Office to facilitate Good Clinical Practice, improve access to research resources and decrease researchers’ administrative burden.
Investigational Drug Service to prepare investigational agents for human use;
Kinetics Modeling and Simulation Core to provide intellectual and technical support for tracer kinetics and pharmacokinetics studies

Additionally, CTRC investigators have access to the expertise of registered dietitians; an informatics core, biostatistical support, and skilled personnel to assist in the conduct of the research, including a staff designated to protect human subjects involved in research.

The CTRC supports the research of more than 200 different principal investigators from HUP and CHOP in over 300 various research protocols. All protocols are approved by the CTRC Council which is comprised of faculty from both CHOP and Penn.