New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS)

Coordinated by Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS), the New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS) comprises a consortium with Rutgers and Princeton Universities, NJ Institute for Technology, medical, nursing, dental and public health schools, hospitals, community health centers, outpatient practices, industry, policymakers and health information exchanges. With access to ~7 million people, NJ ACTS serves as a ‘natural laboratory’ for translational and clinical research. CESP will serve as the NJ ACTS Internal Evaluator. The CTSA Hub focuses on two overarching themes: the heterogeneity of disease pathogenesis and response to treatment, and the value of linking large clinical databases with interventional clinical investigations to identify cause-and-effect and predict therapeutic responses. NJ ACTS will provide: innovative approaches to link information from large databases and electronic health records to inform clinical trial design, execution and analysis; and novel platforms for biomarker discovery using fluorescence in situ hybridization and machine learning to identify unique neural signatures of chronic illness.