The Johns Hopkins Division of Rheumatology is grounded in the idea that patients hold the answers to understanding complex rheumatic diseases. Our Division and its clinical and research structure enable translational investigation across the spectrum of rheumatic diseases. Each of our specialty centers in Arthritis (Rheumatoid Arthritis, Psoriatic Arthritis, and Spondyloarthritis), Lupus, Scleroderma, Vasculitis, Myositis, Sjögren’s syndrome, and Lyme Disease combines clinical expertise and multidisciplinary clinical care with ongoing collection of clinical data and biological specimens from patients seen in the clinical practices. This successful model allows physician-scientists and researchers to conduct translational investigation within each specialty area, and across diseases.
The primary objectives of the RDRCC are to facilitate translational research across the spectrum of inflammatory rheumatic diseases by:
- Providing centralized and coordinated facilities, personnel, and processes to enable the simultaneous collection of an array of clinical data and biospecimens,
- Developing and linking clinical databases with the results of biomarker analyses and other bioassays,
- Providing systems to ensure the data quality and integrity at all stages, and
- Ensuring the primacy of protection of human subjects in translational investigation and facilitating understanding and compliance with regulatory requirements.
The RDRCC infrastructure provides our organizational framework to capture the relevant multidimensional patient data and samples from continuously growing, highly phenotyped, prospectively followed patient cohorts, and provides access to numerous standard and novel measurements, and state-of-the-art analytical techniques to identify and validate disease subsets.
The Administrative Core ensures the integrated functioning of the entire Center, overseeing productivity and managing potential synergies. The administrative and financial management team monitors use and spending and coordinates the institutional Core management system iLabs. The administrative team also manages the separate institutionally-funded CoreCoins and divisional Discovery Fund programs. Core A coordinates the Executive Leadership Committee comprising all the Core PIs and faculty, ensuring that the quality, timeliness and focus of services are optimal for the research community. The Administrative Core also oversees Enrichment programs including symposia, interest groups, speaker series, grant review sessions, and the annual RDRCC retreat.
Leadership and Organization
The Administrative Core is led by Antony Rosen, MD and Clifton Bingham, MD. The complementary research approach of these two investigators, who approach translational investigation with different backgrounds and emphases, underscore the Division’s dual strengths in laboratory and clinical investigation and emphasize the Division’s goal of promoting and enabling novel translational research.
The Administrative Core comprises four elements:
- The Director (Dr. Rosen), Co-Director (Dr. Bingham), and support administrative and financial personnel for oversight, planning, and implementation of the overall vision for the RDRCC
- An Executive Committee consisting of the Directors of each Disease Center within the Division and the leaders of the RDRCC and the Scientific Cores
- An Internal Advisory Committee with representation across the full range of biomedical research expertise at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
- An External Advisory Committee selected for the members’ scientific expertise, experience in the management of complex scientific cores, familiarity with this Center and its history of positive contributions to its growth, and the relevance of their interests to the Specific Aims and Scientific Cores of the overall RDRCC.
