What Is Translational Science?

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Overcoming barriers in research with translational science

Turning basic science into effective medical treatments involves two disciplines that sound similar but have different objectives. Translational research transforms findings made in the preclinical laboratory, clinic, and community into interventions that improve the health of individuals and the public — from diagnostics and therapeutics to medical procedures and behavioral changes. But that process is far from straightforward and is often subject to a variety of challenges and barriers. Translational science is the field of identifying barriers to moving research findings from preclinical to clinical to populations and developing and testing innovative solutions to accelerate translational research while preserving scientific and ethical principles. 

Translational Research

Translational research involves several stages, including:

  1. Basic Research: Understanding and predicting biological mechanisms and disease processes.
  2. Preclinical Research: Testing potential interventions in laboratory settings or animal models.
  3. Human Subject Research: Conducting studies in humans to observe natural disease history, or to evaluate the safety and efficacy of new interventions.
  4. Implementation Science: Strategies for integrating evidence-based treatments into routine healthcare practices and health policies.

A new potential intervention will cross multiple stages of the translational research spectrum in its journey from conceptualization to widespread implementation. For example, scientists find evidence that a drug slows the progression of disease (basic research). From there, teams must perform several stages of testing in animals (preclinical research) and humans (clinical trials) to ensure safety and efficacy before the treatment can become a standard prescription to patients. 

Translational Science

Translational science seeks to improve the processes involved in translational research projects, particularly barriers that impact the ability of new findings to move from one stage to the next. This is done by identifying and addressing common challenges, inefficiencies, and barriers that slow or complicate the translation of discoveries into clinical practice. The goal is to make research more effective, and more efficient, while benefiting the most people possible and preserving scientific and ethical principles.

One example of a barrier addressed by translational science is that clinical trials often fail due to a lack of enrollment, which makes running the trial inefficient and delays approval of needed treatments. To overcome this barrier, translational science seeks to understand how to better engage patient populations. One group working on theis kind of  translational science solutions is the Recuitment Innovation Center, a component of a CTSA program, the Trial Innovation Network.

Additional barriers that translational science seeks to overcome are:

  • Lack of computational methods to identify a gene
  • Lack of methods to conduct basic preclinical studies
  • Lack of appropriate statistical methods for study design or data analysis

“The whole point of the field of translational science is that when researchers overcome a barrier in translational research, their solution doesn’t just benefit one disease, but is scalable and generalizable. Instead of spending months or years trying to overcome the same challenge, others can leverage previous solutions to advance their work” said Rachel Hess, MD, MS, Co-Director for the Utah Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Associate Vice Presisdent for Research for the Health Sciences. “That means we can all get a little bit further, a little bit faster.” 

Utah CTSI: Leading Translational Science to Advance Translational Research

In May 2023, University of Utah Health received a $38 million, seven-year Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The award will support ongoing and emerging efforts by the Utah Clinical & Translational Science Institute (CTSI) to increase efficiency and effectiveness of translational research aimed at improving human health and reducing health disparities. This award continues and expands the institute’s NIH funding, which has been in place since 2008, and builds on decades of NIH-funded research at the University of Utah.

With the new funding, the Utah CTSI will continue its participation as one of more than 60 sites in the NCATS’ CTSA program, a national network of medical research institutions working together to improve the translational research process to deliver more effective treatments to more patients more quickly. 

“NCATS asks us to ‘Develop, Demonstrate, Disseminate.’ Develop new innovations, demonstrate that they work, and then disseminate broadly,” said J. Rob Singleton, M.D., Medical Director for Utah CTSI’s Clinical Research Unit. “We take that to heart at the Utah CTSI.”

The Utah CTSI supports hundreds of projects each year, providing key translational science services and resources to help investigators improve how research is done at every stage of its lifecycle. The Institute develops and implements a variety of solutions, including:

  • Research methods, tools, and techniques
  • Best practices
  • Statistical and informatics support
  • Software solutions
  • Community engagement
  • Laboratory expertise

Through these collaborations, which extend beyond the University of Utah to partners including Intermountain Health, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, the University of Nevada Reno, Comagine Health, the Association for Utah Community Health, and the VA in Salt Lake City, the Utah CTSI has helped tackle projects focused on opioids, dementia, maternal-fetal health, cardiology, thrombosis, pulmonary research, neurogenetic disorders of childhood, and more. 

In addition to research support, the Utah CTSI offers training programs for clinical research teams. Through cutting-edge curricula and high-quality mentoring, these programs help graduate students, post-doctoral students, fellows, and early career faculty overcome barriers in translational research and ultimately develop their own independent research programs. The Utah CTSI has also launched new programs for local 6th-12th grade students, undergraduate students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and early professional clinical research staff.

Altogether, the Utah CTSI has about 80 staff members, 60 research leadership faculty, and 25 teaching faculty. The Institute disseminates translational science innovations via a variety of mechanisms: 

  • Incorporating them into the services and training the institute provides
  • Publishing open-source software
  • Publishing peer-reviewed papers in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science (JCTS) and related journals
  • Distributing them through the CTSA’s national network of over 60 funded hubs
  • Serving in leadership positions in the CTSA working group, the Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS), and the editorial functions of the JCTS

“It might not be front and center, but there's a whole community nationwide that's involved with making sure that our research questions are good and the methods that we're using to answer those questions are state of the art,”  said Jennifer Majersik, MD, MS, Utah CTSI's Co-Director and Chief of the Division of Vascular Neurology. “The dozens of dedicated faculty and staff of the Utah CTSI collaborate closely with that network to develop innovative solutions that benefit the health of all individuals.”

Useful resources to understand concepts of Translational Science