Letters of intent due Jan. 19, 2024 by 5 p.m. EST. 

Invited full applications due March 8, 2024 by 5 p.m. EST. 

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences’ (NCATS) Clinical & Translational Science Award (CTSA) program seeks to develop and implement innovative solutions that will improve the efficiency, quality, and impact of the process for turning observations in the laboratory, clinic, and community into interventions that improve the health of individuals and communities.

The CTSA program supports a national network of medical research institutions that work together to speed the translation of research discovery into improved patient care. Eight CTSA institutions have joined together to form the Consortium of Rural States (CORES): The University of Utah Health, the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, University of Kansas Medical Center, University of Kentucky, the Translational Research Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, the University of Iowa, Dartmouth College and Penn State University.

The purpose of this request for applications (RFA) is to promote multi-institutional collaboration across the CTSA consortium by funding innovative translational science research projects that involve two or more of these eight CTSA institutions. This pilot program is soliciting applications from faculty members at all career levels for translational science pilot projects that will exemplify the CTSA mission of “understanding a scientific or operational principle underlying a step of the translational process with the goal of developing generalizable principles to accelerate translational research.”
 

What is Translational Science?

NCATS definitions:

• Translation: The process of turning observations in the laboratory, clinic and community into interventions that improve the health of individuals and communities – from diagnostics, preventions, and treatments to medical procedures and behavioral changes.

• Translational Research: The endeavor to traverse a particular step of the translational process for a particular target or disease.

• Translational Science: The field of investigation focused on understanding the scientific and operational principles underlying each step of the translational process.

Where translational research focuses on advancing a step of the translational process for a specific target/disease, translational science seeks to develop, demonstrate, and disseminate generalizable innovations and strategies to improve the process of translational research. Translational science projects seek to 1) identify and understand barriers that delay progress or limit the quality, impact, or equity of translational research (e.g., clinical trial recruitment, data interoperability, implementation, etc.), and 2) develop innovative solutions (e.g., methods, best practices, tools, technologies) to overcome these barriers. Addressing critical barriers will allow subsequent translational research to accelerate the time from discovery to improved human health. The innovative solutions will have broad applicability to multiple research projects, increasing capacity and efficiency.

Pilot Project Focus: Translational Science

The CORES Multi‐Institutional Pilot Program will fund translational science projects aiming to identify and overcome barriers to the performance of translational research.

Pilot projects proposed under this funding mechanism should articulate a clear translational research barrier(s) and propose an innovative plan to overcome or ameliorate the barrier (i.e., a translational science innovation). The proposed innovations should be broadly generalizable to many different translational research questions, and not specific to any one project or disease.

For complete details and instructions, the complete RFA below.