About the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Center

Research

Shared Facilities

Faculty

Clinical Trials

Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Center Website

Contact Information

Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Center

Robert P. Kimberly, MD, Director

Graciela S. Alarcon, MD, MPH, Associate Director

Kenneth G. Saag, MD, MSc, Associate Director

Jennifer A. Croker, PhD, Center Administrator

Mission
It is the mission of the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Center to generate new understanding and apply all knowledge to the diagnosis and treatment of patients with arthritis and musculoskeletal diseases. To this end, our goals include integrating and promoting fundamental research with clinical care, developing and applying new diagnostics and therapeutics, educating the public about arthritis and musculoskeletal diseases, and training future investigators and health care professionals.
 

UAB Quarterly--The Official UAB AMC Newsletter

This e-publication seeks to highlight recent accomplishments of our faculty, to inform our community of scientific issues that may impact their work, to remind of upcoming seminar events, and to provide useful links for advanced reading and utilization of web resources.

History and Background
Established in 1977, the UAB Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Center is one of the first comprehensive arthritis research centers in the nation to be supported by the NIH's National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS). It is also one of the few Centers of its kind to gain support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). A university-wide interdisciplinary research center, the AMC serves as the focal point for fundamental and clinical research in arthritis, autoimmunity and musculoskeletal diseases that aims to generate and apply new knowledge to the diagnosis and treatment of patients with rheumatic disease. It is distinguished as one of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies’ (FOCIS) Centers of Excellence in addition to being the top-ranked, peer-reviewed recipient of the Autoimmunity Center of Excellence distinction. The AMC is based in the Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, the highest ranking Division in the UAB Department of Medicine for 13 consecutive years, rated sixth in the nation by U.S. News and World Report in 2004. It also hosts seven of the 2003 “Top Doctors in the USA” (Bridges, Chatham, Heck, Kimberly, Koopman, Moreland, and Saag).

The UAB Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Center provides:

The Center is recognized, nationally and internationally, as a leading program integrating fundamental research with clinical care, advancing the development of new diagnostics/therapeutics and developing the next generation of investigators. The Center’s primary mission is to generate new knowledge for and apply all knowledge to the diagnosis and treatment of patients with rheumatic diseases.

The Center's foundation is research and research-based patient care. As such, the AMC has a commitment to create a substantive, multidisciplinary environment that supports fundamental and clinical research. In order to fulfill its mission, the Center seeks to attract and retain competent individuals of the highest quality, emphasizes collaborative interactions, and provides opportunities for individual professional growth. It hosts the only rheumatology unit in the nation to have both a Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Center (MCRC) and Rheumatic Disease Core Center (RDCC) funded by the NIH. The MCRC and RDCC support several lines of established research in addition to promoting core facilities and innovative pilot projects. The more than 150 Center members have extramural funding exceeding $60 million annually.

The Center is dedicated to educational excellence and the continuous improvement, development, and effective use of its teaching, research, and patient care resources. The Center is committed to leading the expansion of the frontiers of biomedical knowledge and clinical practice in arthritis and musculoskeletal diseases, and serving its patients with compassion, excellence, and dedication. The Center also seeks to provide optimal medical care to its patients, at a reasonable cost, utilizing "cutting-edge" facilities, equipment, and new forms of effective treatment. Its clinical care program includes the use of investigational pharmaceutical agents and a full array of comprehensive outpatient and inpatient services. The Center is interested in developing, encouraging, and further expanding relationships with other organizations, individuals, and academic units that have complementary interests in the rheumatic diseases.

The Center also has a national and international reputation for its emphasis on patient-oriented translational research, advancing the use of novel, state-of-the-art diagnostics and therapeutics. Key to this goal is the establishment of the Clinical Intervention Program (Moreland). This program, one of the most productive academic clinical investigational programs in arthritis and musculoskeletal diseases in the country, has focused on the investigation of biologic agents in the treatment of autoimmune diseases, particularly rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The Clinical Intervention Program played a national leadership role in the demonstration of the efficacy of soluble TNF-receptor in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Notable achievements have included the use of needle arthroscopy in the investigation of the pathogenesis of RA; the use of monoclonal antibodies for treatment of RA; and the first use of peptide vaccines directed against DR4 in RA. These studies have been logical extensions of fundamental investigations conducted by Center investigators which have served to link DR4 with susceptibility to RA and implicated TNF in the pathogenesis of chronic synovial inflammation. Additionally, the establishment of an Infusion Therapy Center in the Kirklin Clinic has allowed for treatment of patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and multiple sclerosis with novel therapeutics such as those listed above.
The desire of the Center to enhance opportunities for translational research led to successful efforts to obtain institutional support for the creation of the UAB Center for Cell Adhesion and Matrix Research and the development of collaborative efforts between Center faculty (Mountz, Zhou) and the UAB Gene Therapy Program (Curiel) which culminated in a successful competition for an NIH contract studying gene therapy in arthritis.

UAB and the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Center have a model record of academic and pharmaceutical R&D partnerships. The Treatment of Early Aggressive Rheumatoid Arthritis study (TEAR; Moreland, Howard) represents a multi-center clinical trial, with support from Amgen, Barr Pharmaceuticals, and Pfizer / Pharmacia to identify the most advantageous timing and combination of treatment for rheumatoid arthritis patients. The continued operation of the UAB / Sankyo Program for Rheumatic Diseases Research is further evidence of the achievement of the Center in successfully interfacing fundamental and clinical investigation to generate productive interdisciplinary translational research efforts supported extramurally. These partnerships were established chiefly based on UAB and the AMC’s international reputations for leading successful interdisciplinary research collaborations in genetics, molecular biology, bioinformatics, translational, and clinical research.

The Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Center has demonstrated its effectiveness in focusing interdisciplinary expertise on the problems posed by arthritis and musculoskeletal diseases and this has, in part, been validated by the continued renewal of the Center's designation by the National Institutes of Health.