DCC - Current and Completed Projects

Current projects

Stanford Cancer Institute Research Database (SCIRDB)

The Stanford Cancer Institute Research Database has a rich set of data which integrates many resources including: EPIC, STRIDE, specialized databases in surgical pathology and radiation oncology, the Stanford Cancer Registry, and the Social Security Death Index (SSDI).

Bone Marrow Transplant

Our continued support and development of the Stanford Bone Marrow program database that allows for reporting outcomes for National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) and Insurance companies (RFI) as well as Stanford Clinical research needs.

Dr. Ronald Levy's Lymphoma Program

The Levy Lab, under the direction of Dr. Ronald Levy, has been studying the treatment of non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, improving therapy of this cancer, understanding their pathogenesis and studying normal lymphoctye biology. Research in monoclonal antibody therapies and tumor vaccines is ongoing. The DCC will work with investigators to design forms and to enable entering data over the Web, as well as successfully archiving the data for future use.

Completed projects

SAPPHIRe

The Stanford Asian Pacific Program in Hypertension and Insulin Resistance (SAPPHIRe) was part of the Family Blood Pressure Program (FBPP) network and was funded by NHLBI. The first phase of this project was a collaboration among Stanford University, Hawaii and Taiwan. In 2000, this project entered a second follow-up phase. Dr. Thomas Quertermous, William G. Irwin Professor in Cardiovascular Medicine, was the principal investigator.

The DCC was involved in data entry, management and reporting for this project. The initial application used a Sybase database with a Perl/CGI interface. The application was completely rewritten and ported to a modern Java/Oracle interface and in the process a number of enhancements and new features were added to this project.

PIMA

This was an NIH-funded clinical trial headed by Dr. Bryan Myers, Professor and Chief, Division of Nephrology, in Stanford University's School of Medicine, in collaboration with Robert G. Nelson of NIH. In this study on the population of PIMA Indians in Arizona, individuals were entered into a randomized, controlled trial of losartan plus standard care versus standard care over several years. The DCC was involved in building data entry and reporting systems for the entire project.

NOPain

This study dealt with the manipulation of the nitrous oxide synthase pathway in arterial disease using L-arginine. It consisted of two parts: one was a dose-ranging study and the other was a randomized controlled clinical trial. The DCC was involved in designing the data entry systems and reporting systems for the entire project.

Dr. John Cooke, Professor of Medicine and Director, Section of Vascular Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, was the principal investigator.

Genetic Determinants of PAD

This was a large study of the genetic determinants that increased the propensity of an individual to develop hemodynamically significant atherosclerosis in the arteries of a lower extremity. Through these efforts, investigators would also examine the interactions of genetic determinants with known risk factors for atherosclerosis. Principal Investigator was Dr. John P. Cooke, with co-PI Dr. Thomas Quertermous. This project, therefore, dovetailed well with the SAPPHIRe and NOPain projects and with the Reynolds Center, in that DCC technologies brought to bear upon the earlier projects would enable our work here. Expertise at finding SNPs, as in SAPPHIRe and the Reynolds Center, would figure here, and so, too, would microarray analysis. This project would be somewhat different from the others in that genotyping would be done in the Cardiovascular Research Center on the Stanford Campus proper. Our approach via the Web would once again prove important.

CHIPCSD

The Children's Health Initiative (CHI) funded a project for creating a pediatric cardiac surgery database. The goal was to build a database that was geared both to research and to patient care.

Our main contact was Dr. Daniel Bernstein, Professor and Chief, Division of Cardiology in the Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine. 

Hypoxic Cytotoxins

This project consisted of four sub-projects, each dealing with a different aspect of cytotoxic drug treatment for cancer. Project 1 seeked to design, synthesize and further develop several series of small-molecule drugs for each of the other projects. Project 2 developed new prodrugs that became activated to cytotoxic anticancer drugs by the nonpathogenic obligate anaerobe C sporogenes genetically engineered to express the prodrug-activating enzymes. Project 3 aimed to develop an improved analog of the hypoxia-selective cytotoxin tirapazamine (TPZ). Finally, Project 4 was aimed to find drugs that were preferentially toxic to cells expressing the hypoxia inducible transcription factor, HIF-1a.

This was an effort led by Dr. Martin Brown, Professor of Radiation Oncology, in collaboration with researchers in New Zealand.

The Reynolds Center at Stanford

The aim of the Donald W. Reynolds Cardiovascular Clinical Research Center at Stanford University was to provide better care for patients with heart disease through the application of modern genetic approaches. Dr. Mark Hlatky, was Director of the Center, which had a strong collaboration with Kaiser Research in Oakland. Projects utilized the techniques of modern molecular biology to identify genes for which abnormalities predisposed to heart disease in a specific way. These genes were then examined for unique mutations that could serve as markers to track disease in larger populations. The project was large in scope and consisted of several subprojects. The DCC was involved in many activities of the Reynolds Center. We had built systems for recruitment, scheduling clinic visits, generating reports and result letters, clinical visit data collection, barcode generation, and sample tracking. As the analysis phase of the project ramped up, the DCC was the place where the final summary data resided. Systems were under development to tailor reports to authorized users of the data for scientific analysis.

Prospective Randomized Study of Elective Colon and Rectal Surgery

With and Without Mechanical Bowel Preparation: this study was undertaken with the leadership of Drs. Mark Welton and Andrew Shelton of the Department of Surgery. The goal was to compare rates of infectious complications and rates at which bowel re-attachments separate in elective colon and rectal surgery, with and without mechanical cleansing (purging) of the bowel. Again, we in the DCC worked with the investigators to design forms and to enable entering data over the Web, as well as successfully archiving the data for future purposes.

TA: Viral and Host Mechanisms

Focuses on pathophysiology of transplant coronary vasculopathy, especially the role of diabetes and CMV infection. Also explored noninvasive diagnosis of cardiac allograft rejection and pathobiology of graft rejection.