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SPARC News

SPARC at SfN 2023

SPARC attended SfN with a large presence, from November 11-15, 2023 in Washington DC. This was SPARC’s first standalone booth @SfN, featuring the device makers from the Phase 2 teams, HORNET.

Each year, scientists from around the world congregate to discover new ideas, share their research, and experience the best the field has to offer. There were many presentations relating to the peripheral nervous system, including SPARCs own Joost Wagenaar who presented on Pennsieve: fostering collaborative science through technology and meaningful data sharing.

The SPARC Portal is the data home for RE-JOIN

The SPARC Portal is the data home for RE-JOIN, the National Institutes of Health Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative, or NIH HEAL. SPARC DRC members serve as the RE-JOIN HEAL Data Coordinating Group. In that capacity, several attended the annual RE-JOIN meeting in Houston November 6-7 to aid interoperability efforts across the RE-JOIN research projects and share plans about incorporating joint innervation data into SPARC’s mission of bridging the body and the brain.

Partnership with HuBMAP

The focus of HuBMAP is to create a global atlas of the human body at the cellular level.They capture the hierarchical structure of human organ systems from the gross anatomical structure scale to subcellular biomarker scale in anatomical structures, cell types, and biomarkers (ASCT+B) tables. A key deliverable of SPARC is a semantic store of detailed connectivity information in the autonomic nervous system (ANS), named SCKAN. This collaboration between SPARC and HUBMAP will build enhanced ASCT+B tables covering the peripheral nervous system (PNS) using the sophisticated connectivity knowledge mode used in SCKAN. This process will also provide a straightforward mechanism to align and enhance use of terminology for anatomical structures, cell types, and biomarkers across the two platforms.

Community Spotlight: Upcoming SPARC-Funded Publications

Two exciting SPARC research projects have recently been published. They will be featured on our Community Spotlight page, located at this link.

Organization and morphology of nociceptive axons in the whole stomach of murine models

This team has produced an innovative map that provides detailed insights into the innervation of nociceptive axons throughout the entire stomach, offering unprecedented resolution.

Unraveling the Brain-Heart Connection

This team is advancing our understanding of the neuroanatomical organization of the cardiac sympathetic innervation.
Do you have a SPARC Story to spotlight? Follow this link to submit an idea for a SPARC Story or to illuminate your research journey on our Community Spotlight page.

Funding Opportunities

The SPARC Portal now features funding announcements, available to browse at this link. These include the following opportunities that are due to close soon:

• The Partnerships With Common Fund Data Ecosystem Resources grant is open until Dec. 5. It seeks proposals for projects that involve collaboration with multiple Common Fund Data Coordinating Centers (DCCs) to combine discovery and/or translational approaches with work that will enhance reusability of Common Fund data and contribute knowledge to the Common Fund Data Ecosystem.
• The NINDS Rigor Champions Prize is open for submissions until Dec. 15.
• The CFDE has also announced a new R03 Funding Opportunity (RFA-RM-23-015) for pilot projects that enhance the utility and usability of selected Common Fund data sets, including SPARC data. Applications are due 12/4.

Conferences

Pelvic Research Annual Meeting 2023

The Society for Pelvic Research will hold its annual meeting in Savannah, Georgia on December 7-9, 2023. This meeting will include oral and poster presentations, a trainee workshop, and trainee presentation awards. A keynote is being given by SPARC community member, Zachary Dazinger. Are you presenting or attending? Let us know at [email protected].

NANS 2024

It’s coming up! Are you attending NANS 2024? We are! Save the date for the most exciting event in neuromodulation innovation! Join the 2024 North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS) conference January 18-21 in Las Vegas for cutting-edge research, speakers, networking and innovations.

NANS links patients, physicians and health care professionals, scientists, engineers, and industry to advance neuromodulation, drive multidisciplinary collaboration, enhance therapy awareness and inspire innovation to transform patients’ lives.

See us at booth #412.

Abstracts Open soon for ISAN 2024

All SPARC DRC Principal Investigators will be attending!

ISAN’s International Programme Committee seeks symposia submissions for the 2024 meeting which takes place between Oxford and Birmingham July 23-27. Abstract submissions for both oral and poster presentations for Birmingham will open in January 2024. Visit this link for information. SPARC member Dr. Kalyanam Shivkumar is also inviting papers on cardiac physiology, the focus of the Oxford ISAN meeting.

A SPARC symposium called, “Utilizing NIH SPARC resources for ANS research” has been accepted!

• Chairs: Peter Hunter and David Nickerson, Auckland Bioengineering Institute
• Jack Cheng & Ariege Bizanti – Spatial mapping of neural data with 3D scaffolds
• Nicole Pelot & Joost Wagenaar – Vagus anatomy dashboard
• David Paterson (or nominee) University of Oxford – Data visualization and modeling to support cardiovascular control studies
• John Osborn & Maryann Martone – Functional studies of vagal stimulation

Gordon Research Conference

The Neuroelectronic Interfaces GRC is a premier, international scientific conference focused on advancing the frontiers of science through the presentation of cutting-edge and unpublished research, prioritizing time for discussion after each talk and fostering informal interactions among scientists of all career stages.

SPARC Community members Ellis Meng (USC) will attend. Dr. Kevin Otto, Dr. Hubert Lim and Dr. Jack Judy are featured in this exciting meeting.

Applications

Applications for this meeting must be submitted by February 11, 2024. Please apply early, as some meetings become oversubscribed (full) before this deadline.

New Webinars

Drs Maryann Martone and Peter Hunter to discuss SPARC and integrative physiology on December 12

APS invites Drs Maryann Martone and Peter Hunter to discuss SPARC and integrative physiology on December 12. SPARC Tools for Integrative Physiological Modeling; December 12, 2023. 4pm

Stream the Webinar Recording
View the webinar handout

APS Neurophysiology Webinar “From Models to Heartbeats: Computational Design of Vagus Nerve Stimulation for Cardiac Health” Available Now!

On October 18, 2023, Max Haberbusch from the Medical University of Vienna together with Esra Neufeld of IT’IS/ DRC SIM-Core showed how to restore closed-loop cardiac rhythm control to heart-transplant patients.Part of the presented work was performed using the o²S²PARC simulation platform, with the SPARC Portal hosting the data and models.

SPARC DRC Open Office Hours

Join one of our weekly office hours to ask questions and learn more from the SPARC Data Resource Center Team. Find out more at this link on the SPARC Portal.