Abstract
The emergence of Translational Medicine (TM) as a potential solution to health innovation challenges has gained currency in scientific, clinical and policy discourses. Using interview data from key professionals involved in TM, this article explores diverse practitioner definitions and the multiple meanings ascribed to TM in the context of a purportedly broken R&D system and promissory visions and expectations built around new life science. It also begins to address some of the transformative impacts of TM on the broader institutional landscape for life science innovation, particularly the changes in traditional institutional boundaries. I conclude that in light of the multiple framings of TM, it might best be conceived as an institutional mechanism or process for co-ordinating multiple actors and complex activities in the new collaborative research and development contexts now demanded of the life sciences.
Highlights
Over the past 15-20 years Translational Medicine (TM) has become an omnipresent concept in the healthcare and life science sectors
The data I have presented in this paper suggests that TM is more than a discrete set of technological instruments and mechanisms for exploiting the life sciences for therapeutic benefit, and it is based on a number of shared assumptions about the nature of R&D and the current challenges of drug development, phase 2 attrition and a gap between the lab and the clinic
I have drawn on a broad literature around hopes and expectations, as well as some critical approaches to the linear model of R&D and conventional distinctions between basic and applied research, to analyse diverse practitioner accounts centred on definitional frameworks, drivers and the general framing of TM
Summary
The emergence of Translational Medicine (TM) as a potential solution to health innovation challenges has gained currency in scientific, clinical and policy discourses. Using interview data from key professionals involved in TM, this article explores diverse practitioner definitions and the multiple meanings ascribed to TM in the context of a purportedly broken R&D system and promissory visions and expectations built around new life science. It begins to address some of the transformative impacts of TM on the broader institutional landscape for life science innovation, the changes in traditional institutional boundaries. I conclude that in light of the multiple framings of TM, it might best be conceived as an institutional mechanism or process for co-ordinating multiple actors and complex activities in the new collaborative research and development contexts demanded of the life sciences
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