National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., announced in September 2007 the expansion of the national consortium that is transforming how clinical and translational research is conducted at academic health centers across the country. Ultimately, this consortium will enable researchers to provide new treatments more efficiently and quickly to patients. Funded through Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs), the consortium adds 12 more academic health centers to the 12 announced last October. When fully implemented in 2012, 60 institutions will be linked together to energize the discipline of clinical and translational science. Led by the National Center for Research Resources, a component of the NIH, the CTSA program funds diverse and far-reaching approaches related to all aspects of the research enterprise. This round of awards includes: partnerships with three minority research centers; three institutions led by women principal investigators; and connections with an additional four national primate research centers, which will help bring discoveries in animal models more quickly into clinical practice.

For more information on the future of academic medical centers, attend Tradeline's Academic Medical Centers 2007 Conference.

The following institutions are receiving awards in the second round of CTSA funding (view descriptions of the 2007 CTSA awardees at www.ncrr.nih.gov/ctsa2007):

Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio)
Emory University (Atlanta, Ga.), partnering with Morehouse School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Md.)
University of Chicago (Chicago, Ill.)
University of Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa)
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, Texas)
University of Washington (Seattle, Wash.)
University of Wisconsin (Madison, Wis.)
Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tenn.), partnering with Meharry Medical College
Washington University (St. Louis, Mo.)
Weill Cornell Medical College (New York, N.Y.), partnering with Hunter College

Contributions from the new grantees will further enable the consortium to:

    * Provide enriched environments to educate and develop the next generation of researchers trained in the complexities of translating research discoveries into clinical trials and ultimately into practice;
    * Design new and improved clinical research informatics tools for analyzing research data and managing clinical trials;
    * Support outreach to underserved populations, local community and advocacy organizations, and health care providers;
    * Assemble interdisciplinary teams that cover the complete spectrum of research—biology, clinical medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, biomedical engineering, and genomics; and
    * Forge new partnerships with private and public health care organizations, including pharmaceutical companies, the Veterans Administration hospitals, health maintenance organizations, as well as state health agencies.

The CTSA initiative grew out of the NIH commitment to re-engineer the clinical research enterprise, one of the key objectives of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. Funding for the CTSA initiative comes from redirecting existing clinical and translational programs, and from Roadmap funds. Total funding for these new awards will be approximately $574 million. This total represents a nearly five-year budget period. A third funding opportunity announcement for CTSAs has been issued, calling for the next round of applications to be submitted by November 7, 2007, with the awards expected in June 2008. This funding announcement and other information about the CTSA Program are available at www.ncrr.nih.gov/ctsa.asp. The CTSA Consortium Web site which provides information on the current members and the new grantees can be accessed at www.ctsaweb.org.

Learn more about academic medical centers.