Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

 In today’s Democrat and Chronicle …Joy Davia reported that the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry just landed $40 million over five years to enable researchers to help transfer benefit of science to needs of patients.

The  UR was of 12 universities to win the National Institutes of Health funding —to create a Clinical and Translational Science Institute. In the UR's largest grant from NIH, I’m excited to see how this initiative can bolster  health services and ratchet up economic development as the project adds clinical trials of new therapies.

Less interested am I in the university’s desire to further bolster its national stature by making it a leader in the emerging field of clinical and translational research… but stature and money that chases success is certainly a good thing.

I’m more interested in following the clinical research that transfers into new medical treatments and technologies. "We won the Super Bowl of clinical translational research," said Dr. Bradford C. Berk, the medical center's chief executive officer. "Now the work begins."

To that end … UR will begin a new master's and doctoral programs in clinical and translational science. A consortium of 10 biomedical research institutions in upstate New York will also be formed around the new institute.

Dr. David Guzick, Dean of the UR school of medicine, gave an example of the anti-cancer HPV vaccine to demonstrate the value of the new institute. “The vaccine — whose development was led by the UR medical center — is designed to block the strains of the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV, that are known to cause 70 percent of cervical cancer cases.”

Exciting news for my city and perhaps far beyond! If the project stays on the path of innovation ... and inclusion ...  that closes the gaps between research and real people with medical needs ...  in ways that influence both – we could possibly place the word care back into health in our city. What do you think…?