An aerial view of the VCU Student Commons Plaza with people walking across it. In the middle of the plaza is a circle made of yellow and black bricks. The yellow bricks spell out the letters \"VCU.\"

Jan. 23, 2025

VCU joins Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Network

Regional alliance fosters multisite clinical research and expanded treatment access for local patients.

(Enterprise Marketing and Communications)
Share this story

By David Oglethorpe

Building upon its clinical research growth in recent years, Virginia Commonwealth University announced today that it is joining the Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Network.

The network is a regional alliance of academic and community-based medical centers that offer multisite clinical research. VCU’s membership will allow more patients to access a great number and diversity of clinical trials in their local communities. The network also provides opportunities for physician-scientists to collaborate and share scientific information with each other, and to expand their capacity to conduct clinical and translational research.

“This new collaboration between Johns Hopkins and Virginia Commonwealth University and our clinical hospital partners provides a platform for clinical trials of new treatments across the Virginia, Maryland and D.C. region,” said F. Gerard Moeller, M.D., VCU’s associate vice president for clinical research and director of the C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research. “This will allow VCU Health System to have access to additional novel research therapies for a variety of diseases. Patients within VCU Health System will have access to novel treatments through the research network that they would potentially otherwise need to travel outside of Virginia to access, so this is a win for VCU, VCU Health System and our patients.”

“VCU is an internationally recognized academic institution, and we are looking forward to VCU being an active collaborator in the Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Network,” said Adrian Dobs, M.D.,  the network’s director and a professor of medicine and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “We anticipate the network will provide opportunities for individuals in Virginia to participate in new and innovative research projects.”

The Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Network was established by Johns Hopkins Medicine in 2009 and includes the clinical health systems of WellSpan Health in southern Pennsylvania, Luminis Health in southern Maryland, TidalHealth in eastern Maryland and Reading Hospital, an affiliate of Tower Health, in Pennsylvania. The network is a program within the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, which is part of a national consortium dedicated to transforming how clinical and translational research is conducted at academic health centers around the country.

VCU is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located in downtown Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 28,000 students in more than 200 degree and certificate programs in the arts, sciences and humanities across VCU’s 12 schools and three colleges. The VCU Health brand represents the VCU health sciences academic programs, the VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center and the VCU Health System, which comprises VCU Medical Center (the only academic medical center in the region), Community Memorial Hospital, Tappahannock Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, and MCV Physicians. The clinical enterprise includes a collaboration with Sheltering Arms Institute for physical rehabilitation services. For more, visit vcu.edu and vcuhealth.org.