NIH expands national consortium dedicated to transforming clinical and translationa...( Fourteen academic health centers in ...)

Fourteen academic health centers in 11 states are the latest members of the National Institutes of Healths Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) consortium. Creating a unique network of medical research institutions across the nation, the consortium is working to reduce the time it takes for laboratory discoveries to become treatments for patients and to engage communities in clinical research efforts. It also is fulfilling the critical need to train the next generation of clinical and translational researchers. The consortium is led by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a part of the NIH.

With more than half of NIHs funding allocated for basic research, the CTSA consortium is perfectly poised to help move discoveries in the laboratory to improved patient care. The consortium serves as the bridge in this process that allows researchers to perfect and refine existing treatments through interdisciplinary teams that extend to the clinic and community, said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. Through the consortium, we are better able to leverage expertise and resources across the CTSA institutions, and ultimately maximize NIHs investment in basic research, which should remain a top priority.

The institutions receiving new CTSA funding include (*view descriptions of the CTSA awardees at www.ncrr.nih.gov/ctsa2008):

Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University (New York City)

Boston University (Boston)

Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.)

Indiana University School of Medicine (Indianapolis)

Northwestern University (Chicago and Evanston, Ill.)

The Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio)

The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, Calif.)

Stanford University (Palo Alto, Calif.)

Tufts University (Boston)

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (Birmingham, Ala.)

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