Duke Clinical Research Institute – Data Coordinating Center | Dietary Biomarker Development Consortium

The Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) is the world’s largest academic research organization. DCRI serves as the Data Coordinating Center (DCC) for the Dietary Biomarker Development Consortium (DBDC).

The overarching goal of the DCC is to ensure the success of the Consortium by providing scientific oversight as well as operational, administrative, logistical, data management, and statistical support to the DBDC. The DCC leads and coordinates the discussions and development of study materials. The DCC provides operational oversight of the DBDC by providing training and technical assistance during the implementation of protocols, helping the DBDC establish and adhere to timelines and goals, managing participant involvement, maintaining intervention and biomarker data, monitoring data quality and analysis, and disseminating results. Operationally, the DCC plans and organizes meetings with DBDCs Steering Committee, Ancillary Committees, Working Groups, and Data Safety Monitoring Board.

Site Location:

Durham, North Carolina

Website

Site Contact Information:

DBDC-DCC@duke.edu

Principal Investigator

Hrishikesh Chakraborty, DrPH

Professor, Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Duke University

Director of Pragmatic Clinical Trial Biostatistics at DCRI, Duke University

Co-Director of the Quantitative Sciences Core for the Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) at Duke University

Dr. Chakraborty is the principal investigator (PI) for IGNITE Network Coordinating Centers (CC), Biomarkers of dietary intake and exposure consortium CC, Health care systems to move guideline-based care of low back pain Data Coordinating Center (DCC), and Mono- vs. Duo-therapy for pediatric pulmonary arterial hypertension DCC at Duke University. He has expertise in biostatistics, public health, biomedical, clinical, epidemiologic, and social science research. He has worked in several different therapeutic areas including HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, maternal and child health, and cardiology/vascular diseases. In addition, he has been actively involved in complex and innovative clinical trials, implementation studies, and research in international settings including conducting single-country and multi-country studies in 16 different countries. Dr. Chakraborty has developed new statistical methods in different statistical research areas.

Site Personnel

Pao-Hwa Lin, PhD

Associate Research Professor, Division of Nephrology, Duke University Department of Medicine

Pao-Hwa Lin is a nutrition scientist whose research interests span the areas of dietary patterns and their intersection with human health. She was a key member of the team that developed the DASH dietary pattern and has studied this dietary pattern and more general behavioral lifestyle interventions in a number of large-scale clinical trials. These trials include the controlled feeding studies DASH and DASH-Sodium, and behavioral intervention trials—PREMIER, the Weight Loss Maintenance (WLM) study, Hypertension Improvement Project, a Sino-US weight loss study, and the CITY clinical trial examining the impact of a cell phone intervention for weight loss. These studies laid the foundation for her continuing work in understanding the impact of diet at the behavioral and metabolomic level. She has also expanded her research into other dietary patterns such as the low carbohydrate diet (keto) and a Fasting mimicking diet and their impact in prostate cancer patients. Lastly, one of her current projects is a retrospective study analyzing data from the Duke Rice Diet Program with the purpose of understanding the physiological impact of the Rice Diet. A subcomponent of this project is to apply machine learning in examining the impact of the Rice diet on fundus characteristics among hypertensive patients.

James Bain, PhD

Professor, Duke University Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Nutrition

In 2003, JB was a founding member of the Metabolomics Lab in the Sarah W. Stedman Nutrition and Metabolism Center, which is now part of the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute (DMPI). He is presently a Professor in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Nutrition, Department of Medicine, in Duke’s School of Medicine. Though the lab collaborates widely in biomedical research, it has always maintained a strong focus on diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and related conditions. The team now deploys twelve mass spectrometers (MS). JB leads DMPI’s efforts in discovery metabolomics, using both gas chromatography / MS and liquid chromatography / MS. His own research focuses on nutrition and perinatal health, including gestational diabetes.