Facilities
The CTRC offers
investigators a number of facilities and laboratories to use for their
investigations:
Main
Campus CTRC
The main campus CTRC is dedicated
to supporting pediatric and adult research unit. It is comprised of a 6 room outpatient clinic in Location E,
second floor. The CTRC has inpatient admitting capabilities on A7 central for
research only and mixed clinical and research admissions (including 24 hour
short stays). A7 Central also includes the sleep research lab which includes 4
beds for sleep research.
Researchers can also make
use of “scatter beds” for research throughout Cincinnati Children’s, UC Medical
Center, and other community locations.
CTRC Research Nurses can perform study specific skills and procedures while the
subjects are admitted or being seen clinically .
Veterans
Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) Satellite Facility
The VA Medical CenterCTRC satellite facility is a unit for adult subjects with two inpatient rooms
able to support cardiac monitoring, five outpatient rooms and three procedure
rooms. The facility has an onsite processing lab with sample storage, as well
as a local clinical lab. Staff are Certified Clinical Research Coordinators and
IATA certified. It is on the fourth floor of the Cincinnati VA
Medical Center, three blocks from the Cincinnati Children’s main campus.
The outpatient facility operates 6:30 am-4:30 pm (later if needed) Monday
through Friday. This facility also offers inpatient and sleep study facilities
by arrangement.
Core
Laboratories
The CTRC Core
Laboratories provide diverse facilities for investigators:
The 1,000-square-foot
Biochemistry Core Laboratory, in Location R, has a staff of four
experienced technicians. It houses analytical equipment including 3 automated
analyzers (1 general chemistry and 2 immunoassay) sufficient to perform a wide
array of assays such as general clinical chemistry, HPLC, RIA, ELISA and IRMA.
The Sample Processing
Laboratory, on the CTRC outpatient unit, houses a refrigerated centrifuge,
a room temperature centrifuge, and short-term storage at temperatures of 4ºC,
-20ºC and -80ºC. The lab also offers a YSI glucose analyzer for rapid bedside
testing. Processing is available 24 hours a day by arrangement. with the CCHMC
main hospital laboratory providing off-hours processing. This service must be
set up at study start up.
Metabolic
Kitchen and Kitchenette
The Bionutrition Core
maintains research equipment and a small kitchenette adjacent to the CTRC clinic in addition to the CTRC metabolic kitchen. The metabolic kitchen at the Cincinnati
Children’s Oak Campus is available for careful preparation of food for
ongoing feeding studies while the kitchenette at the Main Campus CTRC supports
limited preparationand measurement of study specific foods and small meals for
outpatient visits. . The core also owns and operates an indirect calorimeter
(Vmax Encore; Sensormedics) for measurement of resting energy expenditure.
DXA Facilities
The Body Composition Core is in the CTRC
unit and provides instrumentation for imaging techniques. We have two dual beam
X-ray densitometers (DXA; Hologic Inc) and
a peripheral quantitative computerized tomography densitometer (pQCT) system. We also perform other techniques for body
composition assessment, including bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA),
skinfold thicknesses, and circumference measurements.
