Friday, October 21, 2016

CDMRP Publicizes New Resources, including Gulf War Illness "Landscape"

(91outcomes.com) - Two significant new publicly available resources have been developed and publicly released by the Gulf War Illness Research Program (GWIRP), part of the U.S. Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP).  

The Gulf War Illness Landscape

The first new GWIRP public resource, just released today, is the GWIRP's "landscape" of Gulf War illness (GWI) research.  The GWIRP prepared this Landscape as an overview of what is currently known about topics consistent with the GWIRP's integrated, three-part, Congressionally-directed mission: identifying GWI treatments; improving the definition and diagnosis of GWI; and, understanding GWI's pathobiology and symptoms.

In addition to serving as a publicly available, regularly updated, abridged state-of-the-science resource, applicants for GWIRP research funding will now be strongly encouraged to read and consider, "The Gulf War Illness Landscape," when preparing GWIRP funding applications.


GWI Researcher Resources Initiative

The second newly public GWIRP resource is the GWIRP's "Researcher Resources Initiative."  Its aims are facilitating collaborations and speeding GWI treatment-focused research.  

The "Researcher Resources Initiative," produced from GWIRP-funded research, is a compilation of a number of collated lists of targeted research resources that currently include biomarkers of GWI, GWI "multi-omics" datasets, animal models of  GWI, GWI patient cohorts, GWI clinical interventions, and GWI-related biorepositories.  

These collated lists of GWIRP-funded research projects display available resources by GWIRP log numbers.  Interested researchers and clinicians are encouraged to contact GWIRP-funded research project principal investigators (PI's) directly for information and requests using included PI contact information.

Applicants for GWIRP research funding are encouraged to consider the Researcher Resources Initiative for state-of-the-science information and potential collaboration.


Moving Forward

As Chair of the GWIRP's Programmatic Panel (formerly the Integration Panel, which helps steer the GWIRP and makes GWIRP's research project applicant invitations and final funding decisions), I'm very proud of the efforts of GWIRP staff and fellow Programmatic Panel members, whose work made these important new resources a reality.  It is our shared hope that these new, publicly available resources will be of interest and value to GWI researchers, clinicians, patients and loved ones, policymakers, and other stakeholders.   

Both projects are available as links from the main GWIRP webpage, located at http://cdmrp.army.mil/GWIRP .

Additionally, the downloadable, full-color PDF GWIRP program booklet is available on the top-left of the GWIRP webpage, above, as well as a link to a searchable database of all previously funded CDMRP research.


-Anthony Hardie
Chair, GWIRP Programmatic Panel
Editor, 91outcomes.com
Gulf War veteran

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