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  Timothy Murphy

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM

Published: January 12, 2012

SUNY Distinguished Professor Timothy F. Murphy has been named director of UB’s Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC), which will be located in the new $291 million joint UB-Kaleida Health building under construction at Goodrich and Ellicott streets on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

The CTRC will open in May 2012 and occupy the top four floors of the 10-story UB-Kaleida Health building.

The CTRC will be one of few such centers in the country focused on expediting creation of new medical tests, treatments and cures—propelling them from the laboratory to the physicians and their patients who need them.

“Dr. Murphy is already creating a unique environment that is enabling powerful synergies across departmental barriers that bring medical innovation from the bench to the bedside,” says Michael E. Cain, vice president for health sciences and dean of the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

“Dr. Murphy is an internationally recognized physician-scientist in the area of infectious diseases. He has the special skill set needed to bring together scientists from diverse backgrounds who have a common interest in improving the public health through innovative research,” Cain says.

The UB-owned and operated CTRC, a 170,000-square-foot research facility within the joint UB-Kaleida Health building, will feature:

• modern, open-architecture laboratories for up to 31 principal investigators

• a Clinical Research Center with eight examination rooms and an adjacent biorepository that will allow researchers to collect, store and catalog valuable tissue samples to study a wide variety of disease conditions

• state-of the-art research imaging facilities including magnetic resonance imaging, computing tomography and positron emission tomography

• a UB Biosciences Incubator that will aid UB researchers in creating medical products and businesses spun off from their research

• administrative offices for a Buffalo CTRC consortium led by Murphy, the Clinical and Translational Research Training Office and the Community Engagement Office

Under Murphy’s leadership as senior associate dean for clinical and translational research in the medical school, the CTRC already has produced innovative collaborations among researchers at UB and its partner institutions and organizations. The partners include UB’s five health sciences schools—the medical school, School of Dental Medicine, School of Nursing, the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and the School of Public Health and Health Professions—as well as UBMD (the UB medical school’s practice plan), UB’s New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, the UB Research Institute on Addictions, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the Great Lakes Health System of Western New York and Hauptman Woodward Medical Research Institute. Some research efforts also have involved scientists from other academic units at UB.

In just the past year, these collaborations have attracted UB pilot studies grants in areas ranging from pancreatic cancer to in vivo imaging under a multi-institution strategic planning effort spearheaded by the Buffalo Translational Consortium to grow clinical and translational research in Buffalo. The pilot studies program is funded by the dean’s offices of UB’s five health sciences schools, the UB Office of the Vice President for Research, the UB Office of the Vice President for Health Sciences and Roswell Park.

Pilot grant winners were chosen based on the likelihood that their research would attract extramural funding. A second round of funding currently is under review. Winners will be announced in February.

Murphy, a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the departments of Medicine and Microbiology, is an internationally recognized expert in respiratory tract bacterial infections. He specializes in vaccine development against pathogens responsible for otitis media (ear infections, primarily affecting children) and lower respiratory tract infections in adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). His research has been funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health since 1983. He also is co-principal investigator on a 16-year study of COPD, the longest-standing study of the disease, which he is conducting with colleagues at the Buffalo Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The work has been funded continuously by the Department of Veterans Affairs since 1994.