NCATS celebrates its fifth birthday this month, providing us the opportunity to reflect on the remarkable progress of the last five years and share our plans for an even more transformative future. On Dec. 23, 2011, NCATS was officially established...
Five years ago, NCATS was established to catalyze a transformation in the way health interventions are developed and to bring more treatments to more patients more quickly. This required new fundamental principles and approaches to define the burgeoning field of translational science...
This past May, I wrote about the new NCATS Biomedical Data Translator program. I am delighted to report that we now have issued five awards totaling just over $5 million in Cures Acceleration Network(CAN) funds to researchers at 11 institutions who will collaborate with NCATS staff to design the architecture and test the feasibility of the Translator...
Just five years ago, the idea of engineering a human-body-on-a-chip to predict drug safety and efficacy seemed more like science fiction than reality. But today, NCATS’ Tissue Chip for Drug Screening program, a collaborative initiative with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is closer than ever to attaining that vision...
An oft-cited component of NCATS’ mission is getting more treatments to more patients more quickly. It’s tempting to assume that once a potentially life-saving therapy is developed in the laboratory, shown to be safe and effective in human trials, and enters clinical use, its health benefits are assured...
Engaging patients at all stages of translation is crucial: Their input and perspectives as members of the research team help provide insights, focus, urgency and connectivity that can be instrumental in making the development, testing and deployment of new interventions more efficient and effective...
A colleague here at NCATS received devastating news last year: Her 4-month-old grandson had been diagnosed with a rare brain tumor. The cancer failed to respond to first- and second-line chemotherapy, but molecular testing of the tumor revealed a target for which there was a potential treatment...
NCATS accelerates translational science through initiatives that push the boundaries of biomedical research to revolutionize the way we study diseases and discover treatments. I am very excited about a new such signature initiative: NCATS’ Biomedical Data Translator program, called Translator for short...
Biomedical scientists likely remember their graduate school days as being filled with learning the basics of their scientific disciplines, how to critically read journal articles and write their own, and other best practices for contributing new knowledge to their fields. However, too few learn how to translate their discoveries into interventions that improve health...
Last month, in anticipation of Rare Disease Day at NIH, I wrote about the importance of rare diseases research and NCATS’ multifaceted approach to tackling these conditions. I’m delighted to report that the NIH event was a standing-room-only, record-breaking success and that the unprecedented number of participants included members of Congress as well as leaders in academia, industry, government and patient advocacy...
During the weeks leading up to the annual Rare Disease Day at NIH, I have been reflecting on my career path in clinical medicine and therapeutics development. Three decades ago, when I was training to be a neurologist, I too often had to deliver the disheartening news to my patients with rare neurological diseases that I couldn’t do much, if anything, for them...
Some of the most common New Year’s resolutions are health-related, and NCATS is no exception — but we aim for resolutions that will be more durable than average, since evidence shows that most resolutions are broken by February! 2016 began on a wonderful note, with a fiscal year budget boost from Congress that will help greatly in our efforts to translate scientific discoveries into tangible interventions that improve human health...