Mechanistic and translational medicine studies of brain neurophysiology and phenotypic heterogeneity in fragile X syndrome

ADMINISTRATIVE CORE: PROJECT SUMMARY Our Administrative Core is designed to support and facilitate the scientific missions of our proposed Center, “Mechanistic and Translational Medicine Studies of Brain Neurophysiology and Phenotypic Heterogeneity in Fragile X Syndrome.” The Administrative Core will provide a centralized administrative body to ensure project interrelatedness and a governance structure required for a large multi-project, multi-site Center program. Our Administrative Core will organize our internal and external advisory committees as well as our family advisory councils. We have organized the Core around three aims: 1) Scientific Synchrony, 2) Coordinate Communication and Regulation, and 3) Enhancing Stakeholder Perspectives. Critical to our scientific mission is the Administrative Core’s role to promote and ensure the integration and synergy among Projects within the Center and to ensure the integrated efficiency and productivity of all Projects. The Core will be responsible for the coordinated administrative, regulatory, reporting, and financial functioning of the Projects. The Core also will be responsible for promoting scientific cohesion, research education, stakeholder engagement, dissemination of research results, and enhancing stakeholder perspectives. To achieve our Core and scientific aims, we brought together expertise from several universities, a strategy requiring a strong emphasis on organizational and operational coherence to achieve success. As such, we structured the Administrative Core to provide support and resources for key cross-project scientific components. With input from NIH program staff, we took the step of housing these four shared resources in this Administrative Core to ensure that their involvement is coordinated at the level of the Center by the steering committee in conjunction with scientific experts in order to optimize achievement of scientific missions. Cross-project Core resources will be in the areas of: 1) Support for a common platform for cross-species neurophysiological data collection and analysis; 2) Support for translational behavioral and cognitive studies using analogous paradigms across species; 3) Support for statistical analysis; and 4) Support for enhancing stakeholder perspectives through stakeholder engagement with research personnel and research planning. Fundamental to our mission, the Administrative Core will coordinate research dissemination to the FXS family community and the sharing of research results and methods to the scientific community, as well as coordinate and support the training of clinical and preclinical students and professionals specifically to support future generations of clinical providers and preclinical and translational researchers in the field. Overall, the major goal of the Administrative Core is to promote and ensure the integration and synergy among Projects within the Center and to ensure the efficient and rapid progress and productivity of Projects, all while promoting research education, stakeholder engagement, dissemination of research results, and enhancing and promoting stakeholder perspectives. Project Number: 1P50HD118717-01 | Fiscal Year: 2025 | NIH Institute/Center: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) | Principal Investigator: Craig Erickson | Institution: CINCINNATI CHILDRENS HOSP MED CTR, CINCINNATI, OH | Award Amount: $416,613 | Activity Code: P50 | Study Section: Special Emphasis Panel[ZHD1 DSR-A (55)] View on NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/1P50HD11871701