CTSA Network

CTSA Network

For general inquiries about CTSA Network resources, please contact:

As the first academic health center in Virginia to receive a Clinical & Translational Science Award (CTSA), VCU fosters clinical research collaborations across the state and leads in the translation of research to patient care. The Wright Center works with a national consortium of more than 60 CTSA institutions to accelerate the transformation of laboratory discoveries into treatments for patients, engage communities in clinical research and train a new generation of clinical and translational scholars. The CTSA program is led by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health.

The ACT Network is a real-time platform that allows researchers to explore and validate feasibility for clinical studies across the CTSA consortium from their desktops. ACT helps researchers design and complete clinical studies, and is secure and HIPAA-compliant.

The National Institutes of Health leads this ambitious effort to gather health data from one million or more people living in the United States to accelerate research that may improve health. VCU joined in 2020 in a new initiative to leverage health care provider organizations to market the program to patients and the community.

In order to maximize the CTSA Program’s impact, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences developed and disseminated a set of Common Metrics (CMs) for use by the CTSA Program hubs as a tool for collaborative strategic management. The CM initiative captures data related to important functions and activities of the CTSA Program.

CEREC leverages the resources and knowledge base of CTSA-funded institutions across the country to enable the efficient exchange of reviewer expertise to support internal pilot funding programs. Through collaboration, CEREC develops strategies that promote methodological excellence, scientific transparency and innovation, while minimizing conflict of interest in the review process of applications for pilot funding opportunities.

The National Center for Data to Health helps to advance biomedical research informatics and standards to support interoperability, collaborative innovation, and data science training.

The N3C is a partnership among the CTSA Program hubs and the National Center for Data to Health (CD2H) to contribute and use COVID-19 clinical data to answer critical research questions to address the pandemic. The Wright Center joined in 2020.

The Wright Center partnered with the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in 2019 to train clinical researchers and partner on the research topics of sarcoidosis and pulmonary hypertension.

The Regulatory Guidance for Academic Research of Drugs and Devices (ReGARDD) affiliates are regulatory affairs specialists and experts from institutions that receive funding from the CTSA Program. The network enables sharing of ideas, lessons learned, historical information, and the development of successful strategies to assist the academic researcher in navigating an increasingly complex regulatory environment. The Wright Center joined the network in 2021.

The Trial Innovation Network connects investigators at VCU and other Clinical and Translational Science Award institutions to TIN’s resources and services, which are available to support and participate in federally funded multisite studies. VCU researchers can submit a proposal to access TIN resources and services.