Efforts to create a statewide Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences are pressing ahead after nearly three years of planning, as the University and several partners aim to secure a large grant from the National Institutes of Health this fall.
The new research collaboration, which will be administered from Brown, is critical to bringing the Alpert Medical School to the forefront of medical education by forging connections between advances in medical research and clinical practice, said Edward Wing, dean of medicine and biological sciences.
Translational science is an emerging field that seeks to connect innovative medical research with the clinical side of patient care, quickly joining recent advances in bench science to patient therapies.
The center - which includes the University of Rhode Island and local hospitals - will provide leadership in the field of "bench-to-bedside" research, mentoring programs and effective means of collaboration between research teams and patient-care providers, Wing said.
The partnership will allow for a collaborative space for a wide range of disciplines, such as biomedical engineering, nanomedicine and computer science.
It will offer opportunities for undergraduates, graduate students and postgraduate trainees by providing a "large educational component" through new master's and Ph.D. tracks in clinical and translational sciences, said James Padbury, a professor of pediatrics who is one of the leaders of the original proposal for the center.
The center will also serve as "an absolutely mandatory academic home" for spending a Clinical and Translational Science Award - a National Institutes of Health grant worth up to $25 million over a five-year period - that the University plans to apply for in October, he said.
"The center is going to be a clearinghouse - a networking agency, a research center," Padbury said.
Members of the University's Division of Biology and Medicine are hoping the new center "will anchor a successful application and fund this exciting research," he added.
Professor of Medicine Timothy Flanigan also helped draft the proposal, which was approved at a faculty meeting last week.
Translational science has already achieved some success in the medical world. For example, Padbury said, scientists have conducted research on cellular transport to increase understanding of ovarian cancer. Medical practitioners have been able to use new techniques from the research to provide improved cancer therapy for patients.
Given the "extraordinary" advancements in medicine, "it is important to accelerate the pace of those advances into clinical practice," Padbury said.
The approved proposal is a culmination of planning efforts that stemmed from an NIH Clinical and Translational Sciences Award Planning Grant that the University received in September 2006.
The new center, whose administrative home will likely be in Arnold Laboratory, will be funded in part by BioMed, Wing said. The rest of the funding will come from grants, donations and the endowment. But Wing said the current financial situation has forced BioMed - like many University branches - to cut back on the budget for the next fiscal year, putting a damper on many existing plans.
"We have to be very careful where we're going to put our resources," Wing said. "But we can't just pull back."
"This is one of the areas that I feel so strongly about," he added, "that this will help us become one of the best medical schools in the country."
In addition to increasing the Medical School's prestige, Wing said the award will also provide money to invest in grants for new faculty projects and new laboratories, such as a genomics laboratory and a statistical core to assist the center's researchers.
"The clinical faculty and the hospitals are very enthusiastic," Wing said. "It's a real opportunity even in this time of financial constraint."
Nancy Thompson, associate dean of graduate and postdoctoral training and a member of the center's executive committee, said the center will provide a way to connect people in the medical community who may not necessarily come across one another.
"It's very exciting because it has the infrastructure and means to nurture these collaborations and provide a basis that will move ideas forward," she said.
