Coordinating & Data Management Center
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is honored to be designated as the Data Coordinating Center (DCC) by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for the study of Chronic Pancreatitis Clinical Research Consortium (CPCRC).
This honor aligns with our mission to eliminate cancer in Texas, the nation, and the world through outstanding programs that integrate patient care, research, and prevention, and through education for undergraduate and graduate students, trainees, professionals, employees, and the public.
The Department of Biostatistics at MD Anderson provides statistical collaboration, consultation, and quantitative research resources to clinical, laboratory, and prevention scientists, and engages in the planning, conduct, analysis, quality assurance, and interpretation of research studies. The faculty develop new statistical methodology to support cancer research: innovative clinical trial designs, Bayesian methods; longitudinal and survival data analysis; cancer screening and early detection; computer-intensive statistical methods for integrated high dimensional omics data analysis; functional, imaging, and biomarker data analysis; statistical modeling of observational processes; biological and medical informatics. The Department is supported by a Quantitative Research Computing (QRC) group, consisting of an Associate Director, 4 system and network administrators and a staff of 23 programmers who specialize in clinical trial software, data management, Bayesian numerical analysis, and bioinformatics and computational biology software engineering.
Data Coordinating Center (DCC)
Department and Expertise
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is located within the Texas Medical Center, a 700-acre campus south of downtown Houston home to 46 not-for-profit institutions dedicated to providing the highest quality of medical care and conducting state-of-the-art research. MD Anderson Cancer Center provides world-class shared resources such as the Clinical and Translational Research Center, Research Animal Support Facility, Tissue Biospecimen and Pathology Resource, RNA sequencing facilities, and many others under the auspices of the Cancer Center Support Grant. MD Anderson is also home to the Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy, dedicated to discovering biomarkers that predict treatment response and mechanisms of acquired resistance.
Data Coordinating Center (DCC)
Facilities and Resources
Data Coordinating Center (DCC)
Principal Investigators
Data Coordinating Center (DCC)
NIH Project Information
Project Abstract
Research in the treatment for diseases of the exocrine pancreas, including chronic pancreatitis (CP), pancreatogenic diabetes mellitus (DM), and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), has been hampered by disease heterogeneity, the lack of systematically collected clinical outcome measures in longitudinal studies linked with biospecimens, and the slow pace in biomarker and therapeutic development. Given the increasing incidence and prevalence of CP and its association to PDAC, its complications, high mortality rate, and associated healthcare cost, the NIH established in 2015 a consortium for the study of Chronic Pancreatitis, Diabetes and Pancreatic Cancer as multidisciplinary teams to undertake a comprehensive clinical, epidemiological, and biological characterization of patients with CP (including recurrent acute pancreatitis) to develop treatments and biomarker tests, and gain insight into the pathophysiology of CP and its sequela: chronic pain, pancreatic exocrine and endocrine insufficiency, diabetes and pancreatic cancer association.
In the last nine years, the Coordination and Data Management Center (Center) of the Consortium for the Study of Chronic Pancreatitis, Diabetes and Pancreatic Cancer (Consortium) has provided critical administrative, regulatory, managerial, logistic, analytic, and financial functions for the consortium, enabling the successful launch of four multicenter studies (i.e., PROCEED, INSPPIRE 2, NOD, DETECT) that aim to understand the relationship between CP, DM, and PDAC, and to better define and characterize Type 3c diabetes.
In the next five years, the consortium will be renamed the Chronic Pancreatitis Clinical Research Consortium (CPCRC), and the Center will be renamed the Data Coordinating Center (DCC) to reflect the revised research focus on CP, both in children and adults, and to pursue and expand the objectives of the former consortium in these areas.
The DCC will further refine, optimize, and innovate its time-tested infrastructure, operation procedures, and organizational structure to provide strong and continued support for the CPCRC’s studies.
Specifically, we aim to:
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Provide operation and coordination support;
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Continue the accrual and follow-up for the two ongoing longitudinal cohort studies, PROCEED and INSPPIRE 2;
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Support the infrastructure for biomarker development and therapeutic trials, and manage the CPCRC biobank to process, safeguard, and distribute the study biospecimens for the conduct of studies approved by the CPCRC; and
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Design and support new studies selected by the CPCRC.
Public Health Relevance Statement
Project Narrative (Relevance to Public Health – 2 or 3 sentences): The proposed study is highly relevant to public health because chronic pancreatitis is associated with a significant disease burden, poor quality of life, and many co-morbidities, including an elevated risk of pancreatic cancer, the fourth largest killer among all cancers, despite a relatively low incidence rate. This proposed project generates fundamental knowledge on the natural history of chronic pancreatitis and supports the development of effective interventions, diagnostic biomarkers, and prognostic tools.
