The OAIC ACE Unit Functional Laboratory is used to measure physical functioning and body composition in its hospitalized research participants. The Laboratory is located on the 11th floor of the Jennie Sealy Hospital and includes:

• 400 sq ft physical function testing and DEXA area
• 150 sq ft study coordinator office

This laboratory (~3,000 sq ft space), including the adjacent darkroom (~50 sq ft space), is located on the 10th floor of the Medical Research Building (room 10.110). The laboratory provides the following analytical services:

• Microscopic and morphological analysis, including phenotyping of skeletal muscle by immunohistochemistry
• Sample biorepository and tracking
• Glucose and lactate analyses
• Frequently sampled oral glucose tolerance testing analysis and interpretation
• Measurement of stable isotope enrichment in biological samples by mass spectrometry (protein, lipid and glucose metabolism)
• Metabolic modeling

Burn, Trauma, and Critical Care Research Laboratory. Located in the Basic Science Building (rooms 529, 539, and 548), this laboratory has a combined space of approximately 1,700 sq ft. The laboratory provides the following analytical services:

• High resolution respirometry for human and animal studies
• Additional support for stable isotope analyses
• Support for cell signaling
• Support for RT-PCR analyses
• Hormone and cytokine assays
• In vitro rodent muscle testing

Mouse Functional Testing Laboratory. This laboratory (300 sq ft) is located on the 6th floor of the Medical Research Building (room 10.124). The laboratory provides the following services: 

• In vivo functional testing in mice

The mission of the MGC is to provide UTMB researchers access to cutting-edge technologies in functional genomics. These technologies are inherently expensive to acquire and operate, making it cost prohibitive for individual laboratories to invest in the necessary capital equipment. The MGC objective is to provide access not only to the technologies but also its experienced staff. In addition to the core platforms, the MGC offers several services aimed at data validation. A central goal of the MGC is to provide high quality data in a timely fashion and excellent customer service in a collaborative spirit. The MGC currently provides analysis platforms for both genome (sequencing and genotyping) and transcriptome (gene expression) analysis. In addition to the ongoing application of existing technologies, the MGC is also actively engaged in the development and testing of new related technologies. The MGC is supported by Geneus, a custom Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) that provides an easy-to-use secure interface for sample submission and data retrieval. Clients will access Geneus through LabLink, which allows a seamless integration of sample and data tracking with UTMB ITS Biorepository and proteomics cores.

Services:

• Microarrays
• Real-Time PCR
• Sequencing
• SNP genotype
• Nucleic acid isolation
• High Resolution Melt (HRM)
• Geneus

UTMB’s Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Core provides high throughput sequencing to UTMB investigators using two dedicated Illumina instruments; NextSeq 550 and a MiniSeq. The NGS Core offers support in library construction from various template sources; RNA (total, poly A+ and miRNA), chromatin immunoprecipitated DNA (ChIP-Seq) and DNA (genomic and amplicon-derived). Library complexity is assessed using qPCR prior to amplification. Illumina NGS technology uses adapter-ligated template molecules to populate a hollow glass flow cell. Individual target molecules are then amplified to create template clusters. Templates are sequenced using reversible, fluorescent-tagged terminator nucleotides. Costs are reduced by indexing (“bar coding”) individual template libraries, allowing multiple libraries to be sequenced in each of the flow cell lanes.

Services:

• ChIP-Seq
• De novo assembly
• Variant identification
• SNPs
• Transcriptome (reference-guided or de novo)
• miRNA and small ncRNA sequencing
• Quantitative - RNA-Seq expression analysis
• Exome Sequencing (Cancer or Custom Panels)

The Office of Faculty Affairs supports UTMB faculty throughout their careers in achieving their professional goals in patient care, research, and education, providing faculty-focused services and professional development opportunities that foster faculty satisfaction and engagement while allowing each faculty member to thrive professionally. The Office partners with the Dean of the School of Medicine to support and manage the following:

• Apportionment, Promotion and Tenure process and procedures
• Academic Department Reviews
• Annual School of Medicine Faculty Election
• UTMB Faculty Senate
• Provost Lecture Series
• Internal Faculty Development Opportunities through three professional academies: Academy of Master Clinicians (AMC), Academy of Master Teachers (AMT), and Academy of Research Mentors (ARM)
• External Faculty Development Opportunities (funding, when available, to attend national conferences, seminars, and workshops)

Translational research integrates basic research, patient-oriented research, and population-based research and leads to the transformation of scientific discoveries made in the laboratory, clinical setting, or population setting to clinical applications such as interventions to prevent, diagnose, or treat disease.

The Translational Research Track (TRT) is designed so that, throughout their four years of medical school, students interact with graduate students in the Human Pathophysiology and Translational Medicine graduate program. This is essential because of the very nature of translational research, which:

• while typically described as “bench-to-bedside”, is in fact bi-directional, involving the application of basic scientific discoveries to the clinical environment and the generation of scientific questions based on clinical observations;
• requires multi-disciplinary and inter-professional interactions; and
• is dependent on the creation of collaborative teams of laboratory scientists, clinicians and physician-scientists.

At the completion of this track, medical students will be able to:

• demonstrate practical knowledge of effective research design for translational research projects;
• work with PhD students and scientists to identify research questions of importance to human health and participate in study planning and execution;
• function in collaborative inter-professional teams with PhD students and scientists; and
• create a scholarly product describing a translational research project in which they have participated.

UTMB offers formal Certificates in specific areas of study. Each certificate is approved and recognized by the University of Texas System and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. All postdoctoral fellows at UTMB are required to be enrolled in certificate course work. The course work and experiences are also available to doctoral students as electives and to faculty as non-credit continuing education. Each certificate requires 12 semester credit hours to complete. These credit hours include a combination of didactic courses, seminars, and experiential learning.

Currently, there are five certificates available at UTMB:

• Professional and Scientific Skills
• Advanced Professional and Scientific Skills
• Clinical and Translational Research
• Effective Teaching and Mentoring
• Scientific Management