At the EATRIS’ Translational Medicine 2017 Conference, and at the height of Global Biotech Week, it was announced that five of the world’s top translational science organizations representing the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia have joined forces under the new banner of Translation Together. This new collaboration will enable the leveraging of complementary scientific and operational strengths of member organizations, provide a platform to share insight of the challenges facing translation, and put forth a collective voice to advance the science and understanding of biomedical translation.
Participating organizations are: LifeArc in the UK, the European Infrastructure for Translational Medicine (EATRIS) in the European Union, The Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) in Canada, Therapeutic Innovation Australia (TIA), and the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) in the United States.
Mr. Anton Ussi, Operations and Finance Director of EATRIS commented, “It is very exciting to work with these leading organisations to jointly tackle pressing issues in drug development, and advance translational medicine as a discipline.”
There is broad consensus that the development of new medical interventions takes too long, costs too much and too often ends in failure. Furthermore, the ‘innovation gap’ between fundamental discoveries related to human disease and the delivery of new therapeutic options to patients has remained stubbornly persistent. The field of translational science is poised to provide solutions to bridge this gap, and thereby help to bring more medicines to more patients more quickly. In this context, Translation Together envisions a global translational research community of diverse stakeholders empowered to effectively and efficiently translate discoveries into treatments and cures for the benefit of patients and society.
Dr. Christopher P. Austin, Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) added, “Each of our organizations is dedicated to the common goal of accelerating the translation of scientific discovery into new therapeutic products; and by tackling that challenge together, we will be able to maximize the respective impact we have on the lives of patients.”
Objectives and activities to be undertaken through Translation Together will centre around education and training, facilitating and conducting research and development, and fostering greater awareness. More specifically, Translation Together aims to coordinate and develop programs and resources for educating and training the next generation of translational scientists; assist investigators in the conduct of translation and translational science by connecting them to resources, tools, technologies, and expertise; conduct collaborative research projects to remove systemic barriers and catalyze translation; and foster a broad understanding and appreciation for translation and translational science among diverse stakeholders.
Contacts:
Barry Gee
Director, Communications & External Affairs
CDRD – The Centre for Drug Research and Development
Tel: 604-827-1223 (Canada)
Email: bgee@cdrd.ca
C. Taylor Gilliland, PhD
Office of Policy, Communications and Education
National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Tel: 301-443-1560 (US)
Email: c.gilliland@nih.gov
About the member organizations:
The Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) is Canada’s national drug development and commercialization centre working in partnership with academia, industry, government and foundations. CDRD provides the specialized expertise and infrastructure to identify, validate and advance promising discoveries, and transform them into commercially viable investment opportunities for the private sector — and ultimately into new therapies for patients. Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence Program has recognized CDRD as a Centre of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR). www.cdrd.ca / Twitter: @C_D_R_D
The National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) conducts and supports research on the science and operation of translation — the process by which interventions to improve health are developed and implemented — to allow more treatments to get to more patients more quickly. For more information about how NCATS is improving health through smarter science, visit www.ncats.nih.gov.
Therapeutic Innovation Australia (TIA) is an innovative not-for-profit company that supports access to specialised research facilities and expertise to accelerate translation of medical discoveries from the lab to the clinic. Established in 2008, TIA is delivering the “Translating Health Discoveries” project for the Australian Department of Education and Training’s National Collaborative Research Infra
