I have previously written of NCATS’ work to accelerate the development of various types of therapeutics. From small molecules to proteins to stem cells, each modality works in a different way to reverse a disease process...

Answering today’s complex scientific questions requires considerable resources, including deep expertise in multiple disciplines; a wide variety of analytical and computational tools; and access to well-curated, harmonized data. NCATS’ Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program supports more than 50 academic medical institutions — called hubs — each of which is its own translational science powerhouse that is fundamentally collaborative in structure...

An abiding anomaly in translation is that the people intended to benefit from an intervention are generally excluded from its creation. Drugs and other interventions intended to improve human health are consumer goods, and organizations that make other such goods (think toothpaste and clothing) involve potential consumers in every part of the creation of a new product...

The promise and perplexity of stem cells have captivated me for decades. During my medical training, I took care of patients with neurological diseases caused by death of brain cells — such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and stroke — diseases we imagined could someday be treated by new neurons made from stem cells...

NCATS’ scientific goals include discovering new insights and approaches that will make the translational process more effective and efficient. One such potential breakthrough approach — involvement of patient communities in the translational science process from the outset — has shown striking success in individual cases, such as in the development of interventions for the rare disease cystic fibrosis...

“Begin with the end in mind.” This business leadership mantra also is critically important in translation, but defining “the end” correctly can be difficult due to the complexity and diversity of the translational process, in which success is viewed differently from one stage to another...

I am fond of saying that translation is a “team sport,” and like any team sport, translational science is inherently cross-disciplinary. Those training in this burgeoning field therefore must have not only robust education and mentoring in a scientific discipline on the translational team, but they must also have broad-based training in other disciplines...

While NCATS develops and disseminates many kinds of tools and technologies, the most powerful and most easily disseminated resource ever created is knowledge. Translational science, being a young field, does not have the accumulated scholarship and shared knowledge that characterize other fields of science...

The workings of living things are replete with teamwork. Strands of DNA pair in complementary symmetry, proteins work with each other to turn on genes in exquisitely specific patterns, enzymes modify their molecular partners in a myriad of ways critical to life, and diverse cell types work together to function as an organ...

“Translation is a team sport.” This is never more true than in research on rare diseases (defined as affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S.) since people affected by, and researchers working on, any particular rare disease are by definition few and far between...

Readers of this column will know that one of my favorite sayings about translation is that it is a “team sport.” But as any coach knows, teamwork is just that: work. It requires intentionality, goodwill, mutual dependence and knowledge that the team can produce a result that no individual team member could accomplish alone...