IUPUI Professor Named Director of New Translational Sciences Institute, NIH Awards CTSI $25 Million
An IUPUI professor will head a newly created medical research institute that has received $25 million in federal funding.
Anantha Shekhar, M.D., Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at IU School of Medicine on the IUPUI campus, and IU assistant vice president for life sciences, is the director of the newly created Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI).
Leaders of Indiana and Purdue universities on Thursday, May 29, 2008, announced the creation of the Indiana CTSI, a medical research initiative that will combine the strengths of the universities, business and government to swiftly transform discoveries into better patient care and business opportunities.
The National Institutes of Health has awarded a five-year Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) of $25 million to the IU School of Medicine, which will fund CTSI activities at IU and Purdue campuses.
The NIH created the CTSA funding program as a high priority effort to improve the process by which the laboratory discoveries of basic science are transformed into new medical treatments and products - a process called translational research.
The federal award to the Indiana CTSI validates Indiana's position as a biomedical research leader, and citizens across Indiana and beyond will benefit, say Hoosier life sciences leaders.
One key to the success of the Indiana CTSI will be its ability to go beyond translating scientific discoveries to treatments and standard health care practices, Dr. Shekhar said.
"We will build systems that facilitate all levels of research and provide community feedback to researchers. This will enable the researchers to improve and refine the conduct of their science and improve care of their patients. We call it the 'translational circle,'" Shekhar said.
The Indiana CTSI's statewide collaboration involves university scientists in Indianapolis, Lafayette and Bloomington. With community partners including Clarian Health, Eli Lilly and Co., BioCrossroads, Cook Group, Roche Diagnostics Corp., WellPoint Inc., the Indiana Economic Development Corp., the Indiana Department of Health and the Marion County Health Department, the Indiana CTSI is one of the most broadly collaborative of the more than two dozen such programs the NIH has funded to date, NIH officials said.
"The institute harnesses all of Indiana's major life sciences research centers into a commonly focused enterprise that will give Indiana's research scientists many new advantages in finding ways to do their work more effectively and efficiently," said IU President Michael A. McRobbie. "Over the long term, this will have an enormously positive impact on the state and will make laboratories at both IU and Purdue far more competitive for the major research awards of the future."
- From IU School of Medicine press releases
For a photo of Anantha Shekhar, M.D., Ph.D., click here: http://www.indiana.edu/~pmr/newsPrint/52908.html
|
