The Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI) held its first virtual retreat of 2022 on Tuesday, February 22, hosted by Purdue University. The theme of the event was, “Preclinical Innovation of Biomedical Translational Research.”
“For a number of years, the Indiana CTSI Retreat at Purdue has attracted hundreds of attendees because we continue to cover topic areas that matter most to our investigators,” said Tommy Sors, PhD, Purdue University navigator for the Indiana CTSI. “This year’s event was a great success that brought together academic investigators with several attendees from industry and the Food and Drug Administration that provided insightful regulatory path knowledge for translating novel technologies.”
Christopher Austin, MD, former director of National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, was the keynote speaker. Austin is a trained clinician and geneticist, with more than 20 years of experience in translational research in both the public and private sectors. He served as the founding Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).
“Some key takeaways from Dr. Austin’s talk included identifying one of the biomedical problems of our era: fundamental research has seen unprecedented advances, but treatments have not,” said Abigail Cox, PhD, associate professor of comparative pathobiology at Purdue University. “Translational science is understanding the scientific and operational process of making intervention better, and ultimately improving patient health. Cost is always a big hurdle with preclinical and clinical research. Preclinical research requires trial and error, since there is about 50% concordance with animal models predicting toxicity in humans. Therefore, preclinical science needs to move into unprecedented territory with new modalities to test interventions for patient health.”
The retreat also featured panel discussions about novel technologies, innovative preclinical work, and best practices for industry-academia collaboration.
