Johns Hopkins Joins National Consortium

September 18, 2007 - Injury Free Coalition for Kids of Baltimore

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.

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Johns Hopkins Medicine
Media Relations and Public Affairs
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