Clinical & Translational Science
Save the Date – First Annual UAB CCTS Scientific Symposium, Oct 1, 2009
The UAB CCTS will be sponsoring its first ever Scientitic Symposium on October 1, 2009. The tentative schedule for the day includes an one-hour presentation by a plenary speaker, four 30 minute presentations by UAB investigators, lunch, and then a poster/discussion session including pilot and drug discovery pilot recipients. To stay informed about the CCTS’s events and happenings, consider becoming a member of the Center: http://www.ccts.uab.edu/pages/join/joinccts.aspx.
The Society for Clinical and Translational Science (SCTS)
It has been three years since the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded the first round of twelve Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs) grants in 2006. Since that time, twenty-seven more CTSAs have been established throughout the nation. Now the leaders in the field of Clinical and Translational have established The Society for Clinical and Translational Science. The Society’s mission is to advance research and education in clinical and translational science so as to improve human health. The founding of the SCTS is a milestone in forging a cultural identity for clinical and translational science, advancing research and education in the discipline, and encouraging students and trainees to choose careers in clinical and translational science. To learn more about this new endeavor, visit the Society’s web site at: http://scts01.dev.web.sba.com/Default.aspx.
If you are interested in becoming a member of the SCTS, first consider becoming a member of the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Science by visiting our web site at: http://www.ccts.uab.edu/pages/join/joinccts.aspx.
Getting to know the UAB CCTS – One Great Community
One Great Community is the formal venue for developing and enhancing community partnerships within the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Science. Its goals are to:
1) Translate scientific knowledge generated at UAB into direct community benefit;
2) Engage the community in the generation of questions and ideas that will be pursued by CCTS researchers through hypothesis-driven research in partnership with the community, and;
3) Support and facilitate collaboration and trust between the community and the biomedical research enterprise.
One Great Community uses the methodology of community-based participatory research to meet these goals, and build on extensive and long-standing partnerships that join UAB researchers with communities in the impoverished, rural Deep South and with the region’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Community-based participatory research has grown significantly in popularity and practice in the US and is a major emphasis of the CTSA initiative.
To learn more about community-academic research partnerships, please read the following article:
ABSTRACT: Responding to both the proliferation of higher-education-community partnerships and the paucity of studies that report the perspective of the community partners in such relationships, we interviewed community leaders to learn about their motivations for and experiences of participating in higher-education-community research partnerships. The article reports community leaders’ assessments of the benefits and challenges of engaging in such partnerships, shares their advice for both community and university-based actors considering involvement in such partnerships, and explores the larger institutional and structural issues that bedevil higher-education-community partnerships.
Using Google Reader to keep up with Clinical & Translational Science literature
Google Reader is a web-based tool used to organize on-line content from websites into one place for easy access and viewing. It is one of many readers (also known as feed aggregators) that can be used to organize the latest updates from your scientific journals of choice into one place. At the Research Commons, we use Google Reader to keep up with Clinical & Translational Science (CTS) literature directly from on-line journals, PubMed and the Web of Science.
Here is what our Google Reader looks like:
Our Google Reader
To set up your own Google Reader, watch the following video: Getting Started with Google Reader (2minutes). Or follow the directions at the Google Reader Help Center.
Once you have your Google Reader set-up, consider subscribing to the following journals:
Journal of Translational Medicine
This is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal focusing on information derived from human experimentation so as to optimize the communication between basic and clinical science.
CTS: Clinical and Translational Science
This is a peer-reviewed journal that highlights investigative work bridging the gap between laboratory discovery and practice.
And don’t forget to subscribe to the CCTS Research Commons feed. Just click on the subscribe button at the top, left-hand side of this page.
Four things you need to know about Clinical and Translational Science
1. What is Clinical and Translational Science? In a nutshell, Clinical and Translational Science (CTS) is the process of moving scientific discoveries from laboratories to actual clinical practices in a physician’s office that benefit a patient. Some refer to the process as the “bench to bedside” approach. The goal of CTS is to bridge what some biomedical researchers are calling the Valley of Death. Despite many scientific discoveries being made each year in the US about the causes of disease and disability, there is problem getting this information translated into drugs, medical treatment and clinical procedures for patients and communities needing health care.
2. The Different Types of CTS. There are three different types of CTS, commonly referred to as the 3Ts. The first is T1 (or Translation 1) which refers to the transformation of evidence from basic science research into practical, clinical procedures or methods that can be used to treat patients. Again, this is the “bench to bedside” approach. Next is T2 research which is a refinement of T1 research to determine what of the clinical procedures or methods work best for which patients in what situations. T3 research takes the translational one step further to indentify that best ways to implement the new clinical knowledge throughout the entire health care system so that all patients can benefit from the new medical treatments. T3 research is also known as practice-based research.
3. The Road Map. The NIH Roadmap is the strategic plan used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund and guide biomedical research in the United States. The NIH recognizes that many issues need to be addressed to improve biomedical research in the US so the roadmap includes three different initiatives. The first is the New Pathways to Discovery which funds research that will improve our understanding of the human body and complex biological systems. The next is Research Teams of the Future which focuses on improving how researchers work and collaborate with each other on scientific discoveries. The third and final is Re-engineering the Clinical Research Enterprise which aims to speed up and improve the transformation of scientific discoveries to real-life medical treatments byre-vitalizing research infrastructure in the US.
4. The Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs). Since 2006, the NIH has funded 38 different CTSA academic research centers throughout the US. Institutions interested in establishing their own CTS research center apply for funding from the NIH through the CTSA funding mechanism. The purpose of these research centers is to conduct CTS research, train new researchers in CTS methods and improve the way in which CTS is conducted. In May 2008, UAB received CTSA funding from the NIH and established the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Science.
