UAPB, UAMS and ACRI gather to discuss strategic research partnership program, CARS

Faculty members from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB), University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), and Arkansas Children’s Research Institute (ACRI) gathered in June on the campus of UAPB to discuss their strategic research partnership, the CARS (Connect Arkansas Research Scholars) Program. CARS is part of the Arkansas Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program and is funded by Arkansas Health Department (ADH) to focus on biomedical research that will assist with preventing, treating, and curing minority health and tobacco-related health issues, including cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Leading the efforts are Dr. Mansour Mortazavi, UAPB Vice Chancellor for Research and Professor of Quantum Optics, and Dr. Nancy Rusch, UAMS Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the College of Medicine.

CARS Business Meeting at UAPB Participants

“The concept of collaboration between Arkansas Institutions goes back for many years. Now, with the CARS program, we are excited to have teams of scientists from Arkansas institutions who are connecting for the advancement of research and education for the benefit of humanity. We are also aiming for this to be a model to include other universities in the future,” according to Dr. Mortazavi. CARS launched in the Summer of 2022 and brings together over 20 research scholars from Arkansas organizations.

CARS includes faculty and staff from UAPB’s Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Development along with UAMS’s Translational Research Institute, INBRE Program, the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Vice Chancellor’s Office for Research and Innovation, Arkansas Children’s Research Institute, and the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. The mission is to share talent, expertise, and resources to increase biomedical research across Arkansas to improve health outcomes and drive economic growth.

With an overall goal to develop inter-campus diverse and interdisciplinary research teams of faculty and trainees, CARS plans to enhance and strengthen the biomedical research environments at UAPB and UAMS. In the June meeting, one of the immediate outcomes was for partners to meet in person and share their unique expertise and resources through roundtable team introductions facilitated by Dr. Mortazavi.

According to Dr. Rush, “The CARS Program offers the exciting opportunity to build collaborative research between UAPB, UAMS, and ACRI by leveraging the unique strengths of faculty from each institution. We already have seen that bringing Arkansas researchers together allows them to investigate health-related problems that would not be possible at a single institution.”

Partner introductions showed UAPB’s uniqueness in nanotechnology/physics, zebrafish colony, undergraduate and diverse student populations, and USDA and NSF funding. UAMS and ACRI’s corresponding partners revealed their expertise and research focus in preclinical testing, access to biobank and clinical trials, NIH health-related funding, subsidized research cores, and a robust infrastructure for grant writing and submission.

The group constructed and shared a CARS Program Partner Project chart defining seven projects that are underway. The partnership session concluded with Dr. Rusch moderating a group discussion on what is needed to move the partnership projects forward and the measures of success. Afterward, some of the UAMS and ACRI faculty toured the laboratories of their UAPB research partners.