News and Announcements
Dallas/Fort Worth SOP Part of $34 Million CTSA
TTUHSC-SOP in Dallas/Fort Worth is part of a multidisciplinary and multidimensional partnership that received a $34 million, five-year Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) in 2007 aimed at turning lab discoveries into new treatments for patients faster.
The CTSA initiative is funded by the National Center for Research Resources, which is a part of the National Institutes of Health. A major goal of the CTSA initiative is to develop a national consortium of CTSA institutions that will work together to transform the discipline of clinical and translational research across the country.
The partnership that includes TTUHSC-SOP in Dallas/Ft. Worth is known as the North and Central Texas Clinical and Translational Science Initiative (NCTCTSI) and is led by The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. The award that is creating the NCTCTSI is one of 12 given to medical centers throughout the country. The money will be used to bridge a gap that experts say has been growing in U.S. biomedical research: there has been a flood of biological discoveries about disease, but not enough researchers with the training required to translate the discoveries into cures.
The NCTCTSI will encourage the development of new methods and approaches to clinical and translational research, improve training and mentoring to ensure that new investigators can navigate the increasingly complex research system, design new and improved clinical research informatics tools, assemble interdisciplinary teams that cover the complete spectrum of medical research and forge new partnerships with private and public health care organizations.
The NCTCTSI will serve as a center of excellence for the region and contribute importantly to a NIH-led nationwide renaissance of clinical and translational science. Although UT Southwestern will lead the NCTCTSI, the partnership will represent a fully integrated, multidisciplinary and multidimensional partnership of several academic and clinical institutions and organizations.
Other NCTCTSI institutions include Texas A&M Health Science Center's Baylor College of Dentistry, UT-Austin School of Nursing, University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, UT-Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, the Dallas campus of the UT Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health and the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at UT-Dallas.