Moving research from ‘bench to bedside’ is all the rage these days. And it’s getting a lot of money too. Harvard Medical School, BU and Tufts are 3 of 14 institutions that the NIH recently announced would receive grants to start up Clinical and Translational Science Centers (CTSCs). Harvard will receive
$23.5 million a year for five years. One of the goals of Harvard’s center is to bring together researchers from HMS and its plethora of affiliated hospitals, who historically haven’t worked much together.
Just in time for this announcement, Nature ran a series of articles taking a look at translational research. This story in particular focuses on how the NIH is changing its approach to bringing science to the clinic through these CTSCs. The most interesting point to me in this piece was near the end…some critics question whether an NIH approach is the best way to do translational research. They say that nonprofits funded by patient groups/philanthropists are the more efficient way to get real results, rather than the old academic model that doesn’t always reward collaboration.
Hi Corie
This is something I’m very interested in, and I tried to print all of these related articles when I got my TOC alert on Wednesday. (I can’t read on-screen). However the format of the Nature website made it excessively difficult. The PDF version seems to be accessed from different points on different pages. And would it be at all possible to assemble all related articles into a single PDF in future editions?
This probably isn’t your department, but hopefully you can pass this feedback on to someone who can fix the damn thing!
Hi Cath, I’ve forwarded your suggestion to the editors of Nature News and someone who’s working on nature.com.
Thanks! It sounds petty but it just took me so much longer than I was expecting to print all the articles out. I’m from the instant gratification generation, doncha know.
Corie, thanks for highlighting this Nature News feature. Translational Research is one of those overused phrases, but it something I find really important. Over the years I found that few people or groups are successful in combining basic and clinical research – those that did have often made significant contributions.
Reading through the Harvard University announcement, it looks as if they have realized that it is crucial to coordinate all the different basic and clinical research groups that do excellent research on their own, but do not interact with each other enough. That’s why it is important that funding goes not only to individuals, but also to research groups and institutions. So I absolutely agree with your last paragraph.