Translational Medicine and NCATS
On 23 December, President Obama signed the bill creating (NCATS) the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. NCATS, a $576 million branch of (NIH) the National Institution of Health, opened its doors 4 January 2012 with 230 employees.
The mission of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences is to catalyze the generation of innovative methods and technologies that will enhance the development, testing, and implementation of diagnostics and therapeutics across a wide range of human diseases and conditions
Congress created NCATS from other programs, most notably the Clinical and Translational Awards program (CTSA) while dissolving (NCRR) the National Center for Research Resources. CTSA funds basic research in 60 academic medical centers and will initially receive 80% of the NCATS budget. NCATS assembles: the Cures Acceleration Network, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the Rapid Access to Interventional Development, the Office of Rare Diseases Research and the NIH-FDA Regulatory Science Initiative under one roof -- from the laboratory to the clinic.
Congress was careful to stress diagnostic advancements with a lessor emphasis on bringing treatments to fruition, and this is a good thing. Translational medicine promises, more than anything, a better understanding of disease through the genome, proteinomics and diagnostics in particular.
More expensive treatments do not trump more accurate diagnosis. Fifteen percent of our diagnoses are wrong as it is and as many as sixty percent of autopsies find missed or wrong antemortem clinical information. CAT scans do not replace autopsies, but the later are out of style. Translational medicine if well done, might improve the science of medicine as it is practiced as well as the understanding of diseaseand the discipline of patient care.
http://ncats.nih.gov/
The mission of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences is to catalyze the generation of innovative methods and technologies that will enhance the development, testing, and implementation of diagnostics and therapeutics across a wide range of human diseases and conditions
Congress created NCATS from other programs, most notably the Clinical and Translational Awards program (CTSA) while dissolving (NCRR) the National Center for Research Resources. CTSA funds basic research in 60 academic medical centers and will initially receive 80% of the NCATS budget. NCATS assembles: the Cures Acceleration Network, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the Rapid Access to Interventional Development, the Office of Rare Diseases Research and the NIH-FDA Regulatory Science Initiative under one roof -- from the laboratory to the clinic.
Congress was careful to stress diagnostic advancements with a lessor emphasis on bringing treatments to fruition, and this is a good thing. Translational medicine promises, more than anything, a better understanding of disease through the genome, proteinomics and diagnostics in particular.
More expensive treatments do not trump more accurate diagnosis. Fifteen percent of our diagnoses are wrong as it is and as many as sixty percent of autopsies find missed or wrong antemortem clinical information. CAT scans do not replace autopsies, but the later are out of style. Translational medicine if well done, might improve the science of medicine as it is practiced as well as the understanding of diseaseand the discipline of patient care.
http://ncats.nih.gov/
posted by Clancy Hughes | 3/25/2012 05:53:00 PM
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