Clinical and translational medicine
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Despite improvements in critical care, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) remains a devastating clinical problem with high rates of morbidity and mortality. A better understanding of the prognostic factors associated with ARDS is crucial for facilitating risk stratification and developing new therapeutic interventions that aim to improve clinical outcomes. In this article, we present an up-to-date summary of factors that predict mortality in ARDS in four categories: (1) clinical characteristics; (2) physiological parameters and oxygenation; (3) genetic polymorphisms and biomarkers; and (4) scoring systems. In addition, we discuss how a better understanding of clinical and basic pathogenic mechanisms can help to inform prognostication, decision-making, risk stratification, treatment selection, and improve study design for clinical trials.
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Relationships between industry and university-based researchers have been commonplace for decades and have received notable attention concerning the conflicts of interest these relationships may harbor. While new efforts are being made to update conflict of interest policies and make industry relationships with academia more transparent, the development of broader institutional partnerships between industry and academic health centers challenges the efficacy of current policy to effectively manage these innovative partnerships. ⋯ Moreover, conflict-of-interest strategies are not designed to promote best practices nor the scientific and social benefits of academic-industry collaboration. We propose a framework of principles and benchmarks for "ethically credible partnerships" between industry and academic health centers and describe how this framework may provide a practical and comprehensive approach for designing and evaluating such partnerships.
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Precision medicine allows a dramatic expansion of biological data, while there is still an urgent need to understand and insight the exact meaning of those data to human health and disease. This has led to an increasing wealth of data unanalyzed. The concept of precision medicine is about the customization of healthcare, with decisions and practices tailored to an individual patient based on their intrinsic biology in addition to clinical "signs and symptoms". ⋯ A rapid progression of precision therapy has been made recently. Clinical trials have shown the therapeutic efficacy of discovered and developed therapeutic agents has improved. However, next-generation drugs would be designed for disease subtypes with more specificity, efficacy and lower toxicity.