The National Institutes of Health has awarded Brown a $150,000 grant to plan for a statewide collaborative effort to apply advanced medical research to practical clinical settings.
The grant, called a Clinical and Translational Science Award Planning Grant, will help researchers develop a project within the next two years. Researchers will then be able to apply for a full CTSA grant of $4 million a year.
Brown will collaborate with Rhode Island Hospital, Miriam Hospital, Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, Women and Infants Hospital and the University of Rhode Island.
Timothy Flanigan, professor of medicine and one of the grant's principal investigators, said the grant will "build on the continuum of clinical research and care" that already exists between local hospitals and the Alpert Medical School. Not all the institutions involved in the project have worked closely together in the past, and "the barriers are enormous, but that doesn't mean we can't overcome them," he said.
To receive the full grant, the project will need to take a multi-disciplinary approach to translational research, said Alan Rosmarin, associate professor of medicine and a principal investigator for the planning grant.
"We can't just do business as usual," Rosmarin said. A collaborative approach to translational research could be more effective in developing new techniques, such as nanotechnology approaches and global health initiatives, he said.
In addition to "collaboratories" bringing together laboratory and clinical scientists and "cores" which will provide services for pilot projects and new grant proposals, the grant proposal suggests creating an academic curriculum that could lead to a masters and doctoral program in clinical and translational science at the Med School. If such a program were formed, Brown students at all levels would "become more engaged and willing to participate in clinical and translational research," Flanigan said.
