Department of Medicine

Transplant Hepatology Fellowship Program

Facilities

Shands Hospital
The 576-bed Shands Hospital and the University of Florida Clinics serve as a tertiary care referral center that averages 23,500 inpatient admissions and 280,000 outpatient visits per year. The Medicine Service occupies 100 beds including a 14-bed ICU-CCU. The patient population is varied and includes a broad range of severity and complexity of illness. Approximately 50% of the patients are referred by physicians throughout the State of Florida and southern Georgia for specialized care or procedures. Another 20% are admitted through the department's outpatient clinics, while 30% of all patients are admitted from the emergency department for serious acute and chronic medical problems.
There is a 16-bed inpatient Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition service at Shands Hospital devoted to patients with digestive and liver diseases. Consultation services are provided at Shands Hospital and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The state-of-the-art computerized video endoscopy suites at Shands Hospital and the Gainesville VA Medical Center provide full service diagnostic and therapeutic endoscopy and performed over 8,000 endoscopic procedures in 1999-2000. Shands Hospital at the University of Florida is one of the country's top 10 most active liver transplant programs, performing over 100 liver transplants per year.

The unique gastrointestinal diagnostic laboratory offers testing that is often not found at other medical centers. Studies include pancreatic secretory tests, 14C and 13C xylose breath tests for detecting bacterial overgrowth, Helicobacter pylori breath test, serum trypsin levels, esophageal and anorectal manometry, 24-hour pH studies and evaluation of small bowel motility. These capabilities attract patients to the medical center from all over the United States.

Laboratory
A 1,350-sq. ft. three room well-equipped laboratory in the University of Florida with adjacent sterilizing facilities and walk-in 4C cold-room is available. The laboratory is equipped to handle both serum and tissue collection with tissue culture facilities, two ultra-low freezers (-70 C), and three liquid nitrogen storage systems. Adequate power, gas, vacuum, and safety equipment are available to carry out procedures and personnel described in this proposal.

Clinical
The Liver Clinics at the University of Florida is following > 1,000 patients with chronic liver disease and evaluate approxomaltely 2,000 new patients each year. There are 7 hepatologists, three research coordinators, two NP and two PA's to support the clinical program. There is adequate clinic space to evaluate patients in all hepatology and liver transplant clinics.

Computer
There are 7 Dell-PC computers with graphic and data processing analysis, internet access, and graphics support for presentations and manuscript preparations. One computer is connected to the ELISA machine. Two other computers are connected to the university's mainframe system. The trainee will have a personal desktop computer with printer and internet access.  The trainee will also have access to the OTTR Patient Tracking Database System for Liver Transplant Patients.

Office
The trainee has a 100 square feet of office with an additional 400 square feet for support personnel (two secretaries and one data entry person).

VA Medical Center
The Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) is an acute-care general medical-surgical hospital located across the street from Shands Hospital. The GI division provides consultative services to inpatients, runs an active endoscopy suite, and staffs five outpatient GI/Liver clinics. The VAMC is a major referral center for veterans in the southeastern United States providing gastrointestinal and hepatology care to 70,000 veterans in the North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Healthcare System.

The General Clinical Research Center (GCRC)

• The GCRC at the University of Florida occupies over 9,700 sq. ft. on the third floor of Shands Hospital and provides outpatient clinic space, a procedure rooms for conscious sedation, computer workstations, the Data Service Laboratory (computer and informatics), and expanded core laboratory space.
• Support opportunities in the GCRC include: The GCRC Core Laboratory serves as a facility to process and store biologic specimens and perform additional tests on those specimens, including a tissue and DNA bank, mass spectrometry, HPLC, GC, and other basic analytical equipment. Samples processed and stored in the Core Laboratory are secured and coded to protect subject confidentiality according to the respective study protocols.
• The Data Services Laboratory (DSL) on the GCRC is comprised of the Informatics Core and it’s affiliated computer facilities. The DSL is responsible for planning, implementing, and managing all biostatistical and informatics research activities of the GCRC. The mission is to ensure the statistical quality and data integrity of all GCRC protocols and to provide complete computing support for all GCRC investigators and staff.

The Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine
Chaired by Dr. James M. Crawford, has two key cores: Molecular Pathology Core Laboratory (Dr. Crawford, Director) and the NIDDK Biotechnology Center in Genomics and Bioinformatics (Drs. Jin-Xiong She and Richard McIndoe, Co-Principal Investigators). These laboratories are widely accessible to medical center investigators, and are highly conducive to the advancement of new research initiatives.

The Molecular Pathology and Tissue Bank Core Laboratory
Serve as a core facility for funded investigators at the University of Florida. This core laboratory now has $280,000 annual direct costs through Program Project core funding (T.Flotte, PI, P01-DK58327 and M.Atkinson, PI, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation), with an additional $520,000 annual direct costs requested in pending grant applications.

NIDDK Biotechnology Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics
Dr. McIndoe provide major support for UF investigators in digestive diseases, including the active generation of research data for Dr. Nelson. The microarray facility is located in a 25,000 square foot laboratory and is a “Center of Excellence”, sponsored by NIDDK.

Stem Cell Biology Program (Ed Scott, Director), under the auspices of the Department of Pathology and UF/Shands Cancer Center (W. Stratford May, Director).

The Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research (ICBR) is directed by Dr. Robert Ferl, Professor of Molecular Biology.  ICBR's research support laboratories are currently organized into four scientific divisions: Proteomics • Genomics • Bioinformatics • Cellomics and are located primarily in the Cancer and Genetics Research Complex on Mowry Road.  ICBR provides more than 250 services in the areas of custom and high-throughput DNA sequencing and genomics, proteomics, mass spectrometry, gene expression, hybridoma, flow cytometry, electron microscopy, bioimaging, molecular biomarkers, genetic analysis, and bioinformatics.

The Flow Cytometry Core Laboratory (FCCL), directed by Neal Benson, MS and Dr. Raul Braylan, provides essential technical expertise and equipment for flow cytometric analysis. To this end, the FCCL staff is available to investigators for planning, development, and trouble-shooting of flow cytometry-based assays.