Through the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement and Endowment Trust (TSET) Legacy Grant initiative, Dr. Judith James secured $9.9 million to support the new TIHO (TSET Institute for a Healthier Oklahoma). TIHO at OMRF combines the TSET award funding and generous philanthropic gifts, which will be used to create a new multi-level building aimed to support clinical and “bench-to-bedside” research exploring the root causes of chronic disease.

The new TIHO infrastructure will include:

• A Center for Healthy Aging, where Oklahomans will receive interventions that have proven through clinical studies to reduce physical and biological signs of aging.
• A 4,500-square-foot telehealth facility to provide subspecialty care to patients in practices throughout the state and to administer clinical trials to rural participants.
• A 33% capacity increase to OMRF’s biorepository, which currently stores and processes samples from 71,000 participants in human clinical studies.
• Expansion of a new building that will house a state-of-the-art imaging center for OMRF’s rheumatology and multiple sclerosis patients.

Congratulations to ORDRCC PhD Candidate Nicholas Bauer for being awarded Emerging Investigator at the 2025 ACR Convergence!

Nicholas was chosen for two poster presentations over his work using whole blood immune phenotyping to reveal immune cell differences between patients with autoimmune disease.

ORDRCC’s very own, Dr. Amanda Moyer, was awarded the ACR Distinguished Fellow Award at the 2025 ACR Convergence meeting! Dr. Moyer is Oklahoma’s only pediatric rheumatologist and is passionate about expanding pediatric access to medications approved in adults through clinical research and thoughtful inclusion of younger patients in clinical trials. Way to go Dr. Moyer!

OMRF visited the windy city in October 2025 for the American College of Rheumatology’s Convergence! 🏙️ It was a great week of networking, learning and sharing all the great things OMRF is doing for rheumatology research!

In total OMRF investigators and trainee’s hosted 25 Poster Presentations, 3 abstract sessions, and moderated 5 informative research sessions.

Read more about ACR’s Annual Meeting here.