The University of Chicago Institute for Translational Medicine

Abstract

In an effort to speed the pace at which new biomedical knowledge gets put to practical and effective use to improve the health and health care of our nation’s people, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiated a series of CTSA Awards. In 2007, the University of Chicago (UC) received this prestigious award, and with it has established a broad series of research support and research training programs to accomplish this noble objective. The clinical and translational research support programs are housed in a new Institute for Translational Medicine (ITM), and the research training programs are organized through a new Committee on Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS).* The goals of our CTSA program are to train scientists and health care providers at the University of Chicago and in our community to determine the molecular underpinnings of disease and disease predisposition in any individual patient; to develop, test, implement, and make readily available to residents in our community personalized therapies; and to do this in a way that is rigorous, valid, efficient, ethical, and respectful of our community’s needs and values. The translation of biomedical discovery into effective, deliverable, and personalized therapies for diverse populations with common, complex disorders is a daunting but tremendously important task. Few cures for common health problems have been developed using strategies that ignore personalized needs. Undoubtedly, this reflects both the complexity and the heterogeneity of pathological disease processes among individual patients. Situated on the South Side of Chicago, an area in which more than a million community residents collectively suffer markedly poorer health status than the rest of Chicago, Illinois, or the nation, the University of Chicago faces a special obligation to meet this challenge. We and our partners, the Illinois Institute of Technology, Argonne National Laboratories, NorthShore University HealthSystem, ACCESS HealthCare Network, and Advocate Health System, are proud of our achievements. We have, therefore, put together the following list of lessons we’ve learned while establishing our CTSA program. We hope that future applicants might benefit from our experience.