Press Release

November 15, 2006
Patricia M. Hansen
732-235-6307
hansenmp@umdnj.edu

UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Awarded $233,000 NIH Grant
to Support New Jersey Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences

NEW BRUNSWICK — The National Institutes of Health awarded a $233,000 grant to a multidisciplinary team of leading UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical
School research faculty and other academic, industry and state partners. The grant will support the development of the infrastructure and training mechanisms needed to facilitate the translation of basic discoveries to clinical trials and apply the outcomes of clinical trials to patient care.

The hub of this initiative, The New Jersey Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS) will be housed at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS). The collaborative enterprise brings together major researchers and clinicians from RWJMS, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Princeton University; New Jersey hospitals and health centers; local pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries; the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, and health care policy makers and advocates.

"This is a unique, novel and transformative way to develop and deliver healthcare," says Kathleen W. Scotto, PhD, professor of pharmacology and senior associate dean for Research at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. "In this new model, ideas, insights and discoveries generated through basic scientific inquiry will be delivered more rapidly and effectively to improve the treatment and prevention of human disease."

Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and its partners have developed a vision for the transformation of the clinical/translational research enterprise in New Jersey. The center will provide the infrastructure and resources needed to actualize translational research that brings laboratory research to the hospital setting and out into the larger community. From its inception, this novel and transformative approach will encourage cooperation among scientists, clinicians, and consumers
in the translation of basic science to discoveries, treatments, and cures, and in training future scientists and clinicians.

UMDNJ is the nation’s largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 5,500 students attending the state's three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and a school of public health on five campuses. Annually, there are more than two million patient visits at UMDNJ facilities and faculty practices at campuses in Newark, New Brunswick/Piscataway, Scotch Plains, Camden and Stratford. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral HealthCare, a statewide mental health and addiction services network.