• Barry S Coller.
• Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA. collerb@rockefeller.edu
• Mt. Sinai J. Med. 2008 Oct 1; 75 (5): 478487478-87.

AbstractMore than a decade ago, Dr. Joseph Goldstein called attention to the increasing dissociation between scientific advances and their translation into improved health with his pithy analysis of the biotechnology industry: “1 new gene per day, 1 new company per week, 1 new drug per year.” Unfortunately, the gap continues to grow, with increasing concerns about whether the enormous increase in knowledge brought about by the sequencing of the human genome and other scientific advances are being matched by the translational effort. For example, a recent review by the Congressional Budget Office found that the dramatic increase in inflation-adjusted funding of biomedical research since 1970 by the pharmaceutical industry and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in addition to the influx of capital from the biotechnology industry, has had only a minor impact on the number of truly new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration each year. The outlook for the immediate future does not appear to be much brighter, with declining numbers of new drugs being submitted for regulatory approval and the investment community expressing grave concerns about the prospects for both the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries., It is not surprising, therefore, that there has been intense focus on how to successfully bridge the gap between scientific discovery and the development of new strategies to diagnose, treat, and prevent disease; this process is now commonly called translational research.

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