Jeffrey Scott Anderson - US grants

The purpose of the training program is to prepare physicians for academic careers in cardiovascular medicine. The program emphasizes training in molecular biology and genetics of cardiovascular disease. Most trainees will be immediate graduates of internal medicine residencies entering our four-year fellowship in cardiology, composed of 24 months of clinical training (not supported by this grant request) and 24 months of research training. Some trainees will extend the period of research training to three or four years. A core curriculum is established. Didactic teaching includes divisional conferences, seminars, topically organized lecture series, and School and University courses. Each trainee will associate primarily with one faculty member to receive research training in a well-circumscribed area for two or three years in most cases. The program has been changed for this grant period to emphasize training opportunities in molecular biology and genetics in eight basic research laboratories, each with ties to clinical research programs, and in one gene-based patient therapy program. Fifteen additional faculty will offer a full compliment of research choices as in the past, but we expect most fellows to opt for molecular biology and genetic training or training in the translation of basic genetic discoveries to the bedside. The link between basic and clinical research is a prominent theme in our program, a result of long standing collaborations between basic and clinical cardiovascular scientists in this medical school. Training facilities include laboratories in the Medical School, the Wintrobe Research Building, University Research Part, the Nora Eccles Harrison Research and Training Institute, the Eccles Human Genetics Building, the Biomedical Polymers Research Building, the Huntsman Cancer Institute and the Salt Lake VA Medical Center; and clinical facilities in the University of Utah and Salt Lake VA Medical Centers. All of the primary training faculty and most other participating faculty have extensive federal and other research funding. Graduates of this fellowship are capable of designing and performing hypothesis-oriented biomedical research projects and are qualified for full-time medical school faculty appointments in academic programs. During the previous 14 years of this NRSA-supported program, we have achieved an 81% ate of entry into academic positions by our trainees.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is designed to facilitate career development of Jeffrey Anderson, MD PhD as an independent investigator to conduct longitudinal neuroimaging studies of functional MR connectivity in neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, with particular expertise in functional connectivity abnormalities in autism. Although the applicant has extensive mentored research experience during PhD training in electrophysiology of the brain, and extensive neuroradiological training in functional imaging methods, he has not had experience conducting large clinical imaging investigations, requiring patient recruitment and assessment and multivariate statistical analysis of large imaging datasets. The specific research aims of this proposal develop these skills through a longitudinal study of functional connectivity in autism. There is now extensive evidence that functional connectivity abnormalities between brain regions are present in autism, which continue to develop through childhood and adolescence. These connectivity abnormalities comprise a promising technique for identifying autism subtypes, predicting prognosis, and guiding treatment. Yet the mechanism for connectivity abnormalities remains unknown. This proposal seeks to use a longitudinal investigation of functional connectivity in autism to establish whether connectivity disturbances are generalized, localized to connections of specific path length, or associated with specific functional networks. The longitudinal design will allow assessment of how these connectivity abnormalities develop through late childhood and adolescence, and will leverage the largest imaging dataset of high-functioning autism DTI and volumetric scans from late childhood to early adulthood, allowing cross-modality analysis of brain connectivity. Long term goals of the proposal are to leverage the applicant's combined training in mathematics, neuroscience, and clinical neuroimaging to build a rigorous, broad-based imaging laboratory that can make major contributions to diagnosis and understanding of neurological disorders by probing functional connectivity abnormalities in brain networks using novel imaging methods. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This project seeks to provide mentorship and focused research experience to provide skills necessary for him to lead cutting-edge longitudinal imaging investigations of functional connectivity in neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. As a primary application, a longitudinal study will be performed characterizing the mechanism and distribution of functional connectivity abnormalities in autism, yielding immense public health benefits.