At NCATS, we often say that translation is a team sport. I use this aphorism because it helps convey how team science is more than just collaborating with other researchers...

Efficient translational research typically requires access to a myriad of data, but often the information translational scientists need most is located in many different places and may not be publicly or freely available. For example, an investigator might be developing a potential new drug without knowing that the approach had already failed in clinical trials, because those results were never published...

At NCATS, we strive to engage many different types of communities throughout the translational science process, from laboratory discoveries to better treatments for disease to improvements in public health. Success along the way requires innovation, including new kinds of partners who bring different perspectives and skill sets, as well as nontraditional and often unconventional approaches...

Behaviors such as physical inactivity, smoking and unhealthy eating have an enormous negative influence on health. Although unhealthy behaviors can lead to chronic disease, healthy behavior changes can be part of successful disease treatments...

Training in scientific research and medicine tends to become increasingly specialized as it progresses, producing scholars whose deep knowledge of particular areas enables them to make unique discoveries in their fields. But these individuals are less well prepared for the cross-discipline “team sport” of translational science...

Every 13 minutes in the United States, a person dies from an opioid overdose. The number of these overdose deaths — more than 42,000 in 2016 — continues to rise dramatically, paralleling the rise in deaths from HIV/AIDS during the height of that epidemic...

NCATS is unique at NIH in that the name in the Center’s mission — “translation” — has a firmly established meaning that is generally associated with languages, not biomedical research. By contrast, other NIH components are named for widely known medical problems, such as cancer, diabetes and stroke...

“Chemicals” are sometimes thought of as being universally detrimental to health, with the possible exception of “natural” chemicals. In fact, the word “chemical” describes a vast universe of millions of molecules, both naturally occurring and man-made, that can have beneficial effects (like penicillin or vitamin C) or toxic ones (like carbon monoxide or dioxin)...

Given that translational science is such a young and growing field, NCATS places emphasis on training and workforce development. Until very recently, no one — myself included — trained to be a “translational scientist,” since the discipline did not exist...

Anyone embarking on an unfamiliar journey will want a map to help plan needs, anticipate problem spots and formulate contingency plans. This is all the more true if the journey being contemplated is known to take many years, be fraught with hazards and rarely be completed successfully...

There are about 7,000 diseases officially defined as “rare,” or affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S.; only a few hundred of these diseases have any approved treatment. Added together, these disorders are anything but rare: They affect 25 million people in the U.S., and approximately 50 percent of these patients are children...

Every person with an illness wants the best treatment available, and given the pace of biomedical research, that best treatment may be new or even still under study. And Americans are well-known for their attraction to the “new!”, believing that new likely means better...