Translational Science Grants Include Awards for San Diego, New England

A program to accelerate the transformation of biomedical discoveries into patient treatments has awarded $37.2 million to a consortium headed by UC San Diego Health Sciences and its Clinical and Translational Research Institute (CTRI). A $20 million grant also was awarded for a similar consortium in New England, headed by the University of Massachusetts Center for Clinical and Translational Science in Worcester, MA.

The five-year grants awarded by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) are intended to boost what’s known as “translational science,” a term now in vogue that encompasses the concept of rapidly translating lab research into new and effective therapies. The grants also are intended to enhance collaboration among clinical and biomedical researchers, and help to train a variety of scientists and medical practitioners. UCSD’s CTRI and UM’s CCTS are among nine research centers across the country to get a total of $255 million announced today as part of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program.

Information about all nine awards announced today is available here.

The National Institutes of Health, which launched the CTSA program with NCRR four years ago, has created a nationwide network of medical research centers to provide both clinical and translational science researchers with the funding, tools, and training they need to take basic discoveries from the bench to the bedside. With today’s awards, 55 institutions in 28 states and the District of Columbia are part of the consortium. A sixth and final round of awards is expected at this time next year. When fully implemented, 60 institutions will be linked together “to energize the discipline of clinical and translational science,” according to the NCRR.

The San Diego consortium headed

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.