Translational Research

Translational research helps turn early-stage innovations into new health products, advancing the innovation to the point where it becomes attractive for further development by the medical industry or healthcare agencies. Although research in academia and in companies produces many new discoveries and inventions that have the potential to improve health, turning those ideas into deliverable products can prove extremely difficult.

This calls for an additional strategy in translational research, securing the translation of results from clinical studies into everyday clinical practice and health decision making, while ensuring that new treatments and research knowledge actually reach the patients or populations for whom they are intended. This development is a two-way street; basic scientists therefore have to provide clinicians with new tools for use in patients and for assessment of their impact, and clinical researchers need to make novel observations about the nature and progression of disease that often stimulate basic investigations.

Central for this is the effective translation of the new knowledge, mechanisms, and techniques generated by advances in basic science research into new approaches for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, so that the essential goal of improving health from bench to bedside can be reached.