Signaling a watershed moment in the evolution of UCSF, the National Insitutes of Health today announced that the University has received funding for a major new venture designed to accelerate the pace at which scientific discovery is translated into patient care.
The highly competitive funding mechanism, known as the Clinical and Translational Science Award, is being issued under the "NIH Roadmap," a strategic plan unveiled by NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, MD, in 2002 to drive the future of biomedical research.
Universities were encouraged to develop proposals to establish departments, centers or institutes, funded over five years, that would support innovative and far-reaching approaches for carrying out translational and clinical science. Seven universities, including UCSF, received funding for a full institute.
The UCSF Institute will be supported with more than $100 million over a period of five years.
The NIH funding mechanisms will support a nationwide consortium of departments, centers and institutes, beginning with 12 academic medical centers. When fully implemented in 2012, approximately 60 will be linked in the common effort.
"The development of this consortium represents the first systematic change in our approach to clinical research in 50 years," said Zerhouni. "These sites will serve as discovery engines that will improve medical care by applying new scientific advances to real world practice."
The UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute will extend across all four schools Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and its graduate division. It is designed to create an enterprise that promotes research and education in translational and clinical science at UCSF and its affiliated institutions, including the J. David Gladstone Institutes. The enterprise also will include Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, the Blood Systems Research Institute of San Francisco, the Kaiser Permanent Health System,
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Contact: Jennifer O'Brien
jobrien@pubaff.ucsf.edu
415-476-2557
University of California - San Francisco
3-Oct-2006