Potential Collaborators

In addition to your departmental faculty, you may want to collaborate with other faculty members who are conducting similar research or have areas of expertise that complement your own efforts.

How do you find these people? The School of Medicine (SOM) has developed a searchable database of faculty research, the Faculty Interest Database (FID). This database can be used to identify potential collaborators – searching by keyword, name of faculty member, department or equipment item. This database has recently been expanded to include all of the schools of the Health Sciences Center.

Another method for identifying collaborators is to utilize the SOM website. This can be done by searching the website for a particular department, and investigate the departments of interest. Contact information and research interests are available for each faculty member. This link will take you to a SOM listing of the Basic Science and Clinical Departments.

The SOM also publishes a quarterly newsletter called The Pulse with updates about research, awards, publications, grants, promotions and special events. Finally, new faculty are encouraged to establish and regularly update a personal faculty website with your training, teaching and research interests, and current CV so others may identify you as a potential collaborator

Mentors

The goal of the Mentoring Program is to support the academic success and advancement of School of Medicine faculty. Applications are encouraged for participation in either the clinical science or basic science programs. Mentees who apply to the program are introduced by the committee to up to three faculty mentors who are chosen following review of the submitted application and CV. The committee selects mentors based on the mentees outlined needs and goals, with consideration of alignment with mentors’ areas of expertise. 

Purchasing

In-house purchases at LSU Health New Orleans include items purchased from the Scientific Supply Center, the Campus Technology and Supply Stores, and the Animal Care Facility (see below). Purchases may be made at these facilities by approved users of active accounts. The department Business Manager will set up an active account and approved users at the request of faculty. The Scientific Supply Center and the Campus Technology and Supply Store are both located on the 2^nd floor of the Medical Education Building.

External purchases may be completed using either a) A LaCarte Purchasing credit card (also called a p-card), b) Buy-U or c) purchase orders. These purchasing mechanisms are routed through the department Business Manager to the main LSU Health New Orleans Supply Chain Management Division.

La Carte Purchasing credit cards allow you to purchase items within your authorized spending limits without obtaining a purchase order. Faculty should work with their departmental Business Manager to enroll for the required training and receipt of a p-card. The p-card can also be used for defined travel expenses for approved faculty (see Travel below).

Buy-U is the University’s easy to use e-procurement system that centralizes university contracts with specific suppliers. This provides end users with the ability to shop a supplier’s catalog and transmit purchase orders directly to the supplier. Buy-U can be accessed via the self-service quick link off the MyLSUHSC page. Buy-U can be used for scientific supplies, office supplies, computers, or maintenance supplies.

Purchase orders (POs) are required for items not allowed on p-cards or items costing over $1,000. POs are requested by requisition forms prepared and submitted by the department Business Manager. The Business Manager will need complete vendor and item information to complete the requisition. Be aware that since LSUHSC is a state entity, there are many purchasing regulations that must be followed, and some purchases will require us to solicit bids prior to purchasing. Items where a specific vendor is required will need “sole source” letters of documentation from the vendor indicating that this is the only vendor who can provide this item. More detailed purchasing information can be found here.

Hiring Laboratory Personnel

All hiring of laboratory personnel is conducted through the department Business Manager. There are several types of support personnel you can hire: postdoctoral, research associates/technicians, and student workers. Postdoc positions are normally advertised on a national level, while research associates are advertised locally.

Work-Study

Student workers are available from the local undergraduate universities (University of New Orleans, Tulane, and Xavier). Work with your Business Manager to file paperwork and get approvals for a student worker.

Graduate Students

Graduate students are available through the School of Graduate Studies of LSUHSC. You must be a member of the Graduate School Faculty to mentor a graduate student and the application procedure can be found here.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Work with the departmental Business Manager to get approvals to advertise and hire a postdoctoral fellow.

Summer Programs

Medical students who have completed their first year of training are eligible to apply for the Medical Student Summer Research Program to work on a summer research project during the 8 weeks between their first and second years. This program is designed for both students who have research experience and for those who do not. Students may choose any LSUHSC faculty member with an active research program as their mentor.

The campus also has several summer programs for undergraduate and high school students with specialties in bioinformatics, biochemistry, cancer, cell biology, epidemiology, genetics, microbiology, neuroscience, pharmacology and physiology.

Medical Student Honors Research Program

Medical students may also conduct research part-time during their 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th years of medical school. The Medical Student Honors Research Program supplements the regular MD curriculum and is designed to challenge the exceptional student with an independent research project of basic science/clinical interest. This is often an option after the Medical Student summer research program for exceptional students wishing to continue their summer projects.

Research Regulatory Compliance

Laboratory Safety 

All laboratories at LSU Health New Orleans are inspected annually and the inspection policy is found here. Environmental Health and Safety has extensive information available on their website to facilitate onboarding of new laboratories, including registration of biological and chemical inventories in Safety Stratus.

Radiation Safety Committee

Radiation Safety is a division of the Environmental Health and Safety that oversees the use of ionizing radiation on the campus. All faculty/staff using radiation must participate in and pass a quarterly radiation safety training course. If new faculty are planning to use radioactivity or any other form of radiation (i.e. class 3b or 4 lasers) these sources must be registered with the Radiation Safety Officer.

Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC)

All research projects that involve animals, pathogens, potentially infectious materials, select and biological toxins, and other biohazards including recombinant or synthetic nucleic acid molecules, must submit an IBC.

Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)

All research projects that involve animals must submit an IACUC protocol detailing the animal numbers, use, and interventions.

Institutional Review Board (IRB)

The IRB is responsible for reviewing all research projects involving the use of human subjects, with the purpose of protecting the rights and welfare of individuals participating in those projects. It is the policy of LSU Health New Orleans that all projects involving human beings and/or information or tissue collected from human beings must be presented to the IRB for a determination as to whether 1) the project is human subjects research, 2) the human subjects research can be given Exempt status under Federal regulations or 3) the human subjects research project must have IRB review, approval, and continued oversight.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

HIPPA establishes the conditions under which protected health information may be used or disclosed by covered entities. All LSU Health New Orleans employees are required to complete HIPAA training.

Compliance Training

All faculty, staff and students of LSU Health New Orleans are required to complete Compliance Training covering topics as laboratory safety, internet safety, HIPAA, FERPA, Code of Conduct, sexual harassment, emergency procedures, etc. Training is assigned to employees based on their role at the university and is managed by the Compliance and Training System (CATS). Employees will receive an email with a link indicating what modules need to be completed or employees can go directly to the Compliance website above to log into CATS using their LSUHSC credentials.

Additional training through the CITI Program is required for human subjects research and use of animals in biomedical research. The modules required are dependent upon the content of an IBC, IRB and/or IACUC protocol and will be listed as required prior to approval. First time users should use the registration link and affiliate with LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans (SSO). This allows the use of your LSUHSC credentials to sign in to the CITI Program.

All employees of the State of Louisiana are required to complete annual ethics training. First time users should use the Register (New User) link to register in the system using your LSUHSC email and a unique password that is NOT your LSUHSC password. Once logged in, faculty should complete the course called Code of Ethics Training for Public Servants.

Animal Care

LSU Health New Orleans has three animal care facilities located in the CSRB, the Louisiana Cancer Research Center Building, and the Dental School. The facilities are capable of housing mice, rats, shrews, rabbits, cats, birds, monkeys and some pigs. The facilities are managed by board certified veterinarians and registered veterinary technicians.  An IACUC protocol must be fully approved prior to any animal work. Additional hands-on barrier training and online CITI training is required for faculty and students working with animals and can be accessed off the main Animal Care website. Any investigator wishing to use controlled substances must obtain their own controlled substance license and the form for this is also available on the Animal Care website.

Core Facilities

Core Facilities are research units within the SOM with specialized equipment and personnel to facilitate data generation and collection.

Biospecimen Core Laboratory (Cancer Center)

The BCL is a part of the Louisiana Cancer Research Center (LCRC) infrastructure with mission to collect high quality samples of normal and diseased human material (e.g., whole blood, cellular blood components, bone marrow, plasma, serum, urine, benign and malignant tissue) with appropriate pathological and demographic data. The material collected is available to qualified researchers at the LCRC while ensuring ethical informed consent, safety, donor anonymity, and all regulatory safeguards are in place. To use this service, investigators must have a fully approved IRB protocol. Service list and user fees are listed on the website along with the Tissue Utilization Service Request Form.

Biostatistics, Study Design and Data Science Core 

The BSDDS core was developed to provide collaborative biostatistics expertise. Their mission is to help researchers plan studies & grants, while executing data analyses. They also have a core mission of leveraging electronic health record data (EHR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help researchers go after grants, help clinicians treat patients, and position LSUHSC as a leader in healthcare/research informatics. They work in all areas of research including: Cancer, Trauma, Surgery, Disparities Research, Artificial Intelligence/Predictive Modeling, Population Science, Orthopedics, Dermatology, Dentistry, Pediatrics, Public Health, HIV/AIDS, Cell Biology, Clinical Trials,  Behavioral Health, and many more.

Cellular Immunology and Immune Metabolism Core (Cancer Center)

The CIMC core in the Louisiana Cancer Research Center provides state-of-the-art instrumentation and expertise in flow cytometry and cell sorting, and immune cell function. In addition to the BD FACSAria sorter, the core houses advanced analyzers such as BD LSRII, Auto MACS cell sorter, BioRad Bio-plex system, Elispot reader and Luminoscan. It will provide consulting services on experimental design technical assistance, trouble shooting, and data analysis on a fee-for-service basis.

Clinical and Translational Research Center

The LSUHSC Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) provides clinical investigators the tools, staffing and research expertise to support clinical and translational research. Any LSU investigator or their affiliates conducting an Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved clinical research project may apply to use the LSU CTRC on a fee-for-service basis. The CTRC will provide a cost analysis for study implementation, which is subject to review and approval prior to study initiation. Study submission begins with the completion of the CTRC application in SPARC.

Molecular Histopathology and Analytical Microscopy Core (Cancer Center)

This core was established in response to high-demands for pathology expertise and laboratory analyses of a large number of clinical and animal tumor samples. This core is critical for Center for Translational Viral Oncology (CTVO) and is/will be heavily utilized by all investigators involved in this project. The core will assist PJIs and their mentors with histopathological evaluation of clinical materials, and will determine how different molecular pathways are altered in the context of carcinogenesis. The highly trained core staff will perform routine tissue processing for paraffin and frozen section preparation, H&E staining, immuno-histochemistry, immune- histofluorescence, in-situ hybridization, and will assist PJIs in all technical challenges and pathological evaluation of the obtained results. In addition, small animal Imaging based on optical imaging (Xenogen IVIS 200), and laser-capture micro-dissection will be available to scientists as a collaborative effort between MHAM and Morphology/Imaging Core.

Morphology and Imaging Core

The purpose of the MIC is to assist investigators requiring detection, imaging, and morphometric analysis of gene and protein expression in any type of cell or tissue in vitro or in vivo. The main goal is to assure high quality and consistent reproducibility underpinned by expert advice on experimental design and interpretation to produce valid imaging data. The state-of-the-art histopathology and biomedical imaging services are available to all LSU Health New Orleans faculty on a fee-for-service basis.

Proteomics and Metabolomics Core

The mission of The Proteomics Core Facility is to support investigators in their biomedical research programs at LSU Health New Orleans and the surrounding New Orleans area. The central focus of The Core is the identification of unknown proteins, the characterization of potential post-translational modifications (phosphorylation, ubiquitination, etc.) resulting from targeted proteomic screens arising from immunoprecipitation, protein interaction studies, or similar approaches, and the implementation of quantitative proteomics analysis approaches. 

Precision Medicine Clinical Laboratory

The Precision Medicine Clinical Laboratory is staffed by two licensed, registered Medical Technologists who perform cancer molecular testing using the Illumina TruSight Oncology (TSO500) platform for solid tumors. This is a Next-Generation Sequencing-based clinical test that interrogates 523 genes that are known drivers or associated with cancer formation and metastasis. This test detects small nucleotide variants (SNV), insertions/deletions (indels), fusions, splice variants, and copy number changes from FFPE tumor specimens, while also reporting overall tumor mutational burden (TMB) and microsatellite instability (MSI). Variant interpretation is powered by the Velsera Clinical Genomics Workspace knowledgebase to generate clinical reports to help guide medical oncology patient management.

Translational Genomics Core (Cancer Center)

The LSUHSC, Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center’s Translational Genomics Core (TGC) is committed to their research community through service, training, teaching and organizing seminars to keep our community informed of recent development in specific topics concerning genomics. Located in the 9th Floor of the LCRC Building, the TGC is a core resource of LSU Health Science Center, currently sponsored by COBRE III (P30GM114732, A. Ochoa PI) and COBRE I (1P20GM121288-01, K. Reiss PI) grants. The Facility is committed to providing quality service by fulfilling the needs of the research community in a consistently rapid, dependable, and economical fashion. Services include automated DNA sequencing, using state-of-the-art instrumentation and the latest protocols to ensure high quality results at reasonable prices. The Facility houses an Illumina NextSeq500, a MiSeq (both for next generation sequencing), and an Illumina iScan for the analysis of microarray-based analyses including methylation, GWAS, microarray-based exome analysis, and several focused arrays, among others. The Core also has a 7900HT and QuantStudio 12K real-time PCR systems from ThermoScientific for gene expression validation, a Covaris DNA fragmentation instrument for the preparation of DNA for exome sequencing, a ddSingle cell isolator from Biorad, a 3’-based sequencing technology for the analysis of mRNA levels in single cell suspensions.

Institutional Software

LSU Health New Orleans has institutional subscriptions for the Microsoft Office 365 suite of software, which should be automatically available on your LSUHSC computer. Contact the IT Service Desk with any computer problems.

EndNote – LSU Health New Orleans has an institutional subscription to EndNote that can be downloaded to your LSUHSC computer.

BioRender – BioRender is an online graphics tool that allows creation of professional science figures in minutes and has an add-on to seamlessly integrate with PowerPoint. LSU New Orleans has an institutional subscription that can be accessed using your LSUHSC credentials.

Gas Cylinder Program

LSU Health New Orleans has a Gas Cylinder Program for any researcher on campus who requires any type of cylinder gas for their research. Airgas is the sole provider of laboratory gas on campus and there is an onsite vendor representative who can assist with delivery, valves, and cylinder security. Faculty should work with their departmental Business Manager to order any laboratory gas.

Funding Sources

Research Enhancement Program (REP)

The Dean’s office supports 6 major grant programs: Bridge Grants,  New Project Grants, Clinical Research Grants,  Health Disparities Grants, Resident Research Grants, and Health Science Center-Wide Intramural Research Program (WIRP) programs. 

Additional ways to locate funding opportunities:

NIH RePORT – searchable database of federally funded biomedical research projects conducted across the US. Other searchable fields are making this an essential tool in the search for funding opportunities.

Grants.gov – searchable database of grant opportunities from all federal grant-making agencies.

Guidestar – leading source of information on US Nonprofits, with a searchable database of IRS-recognized nonprofit organizations, many of whom have grant funding opportunities.

Conafay Group – consulting group from Washington DC that works with the NIH and the Department of Defense and attempts to link researchers with federal funding sources.

Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium - a DoD-focused nonprofit that funds medical technology development.
 

Contract Research

A source of funding for research may also evolve from a relationship between an LSU Health New Orleans investigator and a healthcare/pharmaceutical company (sponsor) interested in outsourcing some of its research. Once you have negotiated the Scope of Work with the sponsor, work with the department Business Manager and the sponsor to develop a budget that includes current university-negotiated fringe benefit rates for personnel, and facilities and administrative (F&A) indirect costs. This must be routed to the Office of Research Services for additional review. If necessary, the Office of Innovation and Partnerships may also be contacted to ensure that intellectual property and patent clauses are acceptable.

Conflicts of Interest in Research

LSU Health New Orleans encourages faculty, staff, students, house officers, and other employees to participate in meaningful professional relationships with industry, government, and private entities. These relationships are established for mutually beneficial reasons and many times produce knowledge and intellectual property that will help the community at large. However, these relationships may create financial or non-financial interests that have the potential to create a bias in decisions. These relationships need to be properly declared and managed to avoid bias in research. For webpage and forms click here

Office of Innovation & Partnerships

The primary responsibility of the Office of Innovation & Partnerships is to advance innovation by serving the faculty, staff, and students; supporting the research enterprise; and partnering with entrepreneurs and businesses to collaborate on translational research and commercialize inventions that enhance the economy and benefit the public. OIP asks that faculty disclose innovations to the OIP office before submitting manuscripts for publication or making other enabling disclosures outside of LSU.  Inventors are strongly encouraged to disclose inventions to the OIP before submitting manuscripts for publishing, using the disclosure form.

Material Transfer Agreements

Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) are contracts governing the transfer of tangible research property from one entity to another and are handled by the Office of Innovation and Partnerships (OIP). If a faculty member needs to obtain material from another institution or another institution requests material from an LSU Health New Orleans faculty member, a Material Transfer Initiation Form must be completed and returned to the OIP. OIP will use this form to determine what type of agreement is needed and will work directly with the other party to negotiate and execute that agreement. MTAs must be fully executed by both parties prior to shipment of any material.