Johns Hopkins Joins National Consortium To Speed Research From Clinic Community

The Johns Hopkins University announced today that it has received an award
of more than $100 million spread over five years to initiate the Johns Hopkins
Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR). The ICTR will be tasked
with enabling Johns Hopkins researchers to hasten and improve the process of
getting promising research from the lab to the clinic and eventually to the
community.

“This grant is an acknowledgement of the breadth and quality of clinical and
translational research here at Johns Hopkins and represents another recognition
of Johns Hopkins’ commitment to innovation,” says Daniel Ford, M.D., vice dean
for clinical investigation at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The grant, supported by the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA),
a program led by the National Center for Research Resources, part of the National
Institutes of Health, will provide support to more than 100 faculty members
throughout The Johns Hopkins University, including the schools of Medicine,
Engineering, Nursing and Public Health.

As a CTSA recipient, Johns Hopkins will join a consortium aimed at transforming
how clinical and translational research is conducted at academic health centers
around the country. Currently, 12 academic medical centers across the United
States make up the consortium; this new round of awards adds 12 more centers
to the consortium.

This funding is intended to allow academic medical centers to form relationships
within the consortium as well as partner with outside organizations involved with
health care throughout the nation. Contributions from Johns Hopkins and other
schools will enable the consortium to provide enriched environments for training
researchers to translate their discoveries into clinical trials and ultimately into practice.

The ICTR will use consortium funds to design new and improved tools for analyzing
research data and managing clinical trials; support outreach to underserved populations,
local community and advocacy organizations, and health care providers; assemble
interdisciplinary teams of scientists; and forge new partnerships with private and public
health care organizations, including pharmaceutical companies, the Veterans
Administration hospitals, health maintenance organizations and state health agencies.

“Here at Hopkins, and across the nation, we are producing more basic science discoveries
than ever, but we have not been able to translate as many of these discoveries to
improving the lives of those with diseases as we would like,” says Ford. “Joining this
national consortium and starting the ICTR will allow us to deliver more health to more
people more rapidly.”

The eleven other academic medical centers joining Johns Hopkins in this latest round
of consortium funding are Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio; Emory
University in Atlanta, Ga.; University of Chicago in Illinois; University of Iowa in Iowa City;
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; University of Texas Southwest Medical Center in Dallas;
University of Washington in Seattle; University of Wisconsin in Madison; Vanderbilt University
in Nashville, Tenn.; Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.; and Weill Medical College of Cornell
University in New York.