The Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute has received $55 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to accelerate development, evaluation and implementation of improved healthcare interventions.
The seven-year award is the largest active research grant at Northwestern and extends a legacy of NIH funding that began when the institute launched in 2008.
“Clinical and translational research does not happen in a bubble, it requires dedicated investigators and members of the public to advance human health,” said Richard D’Aquila, MD, the Howard Taylor Ricketts, MD, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and senior associate dean for clinical and translational research. “With generous support from the NIH and Northwestern, we will continue to work alongside our exceptional coalition of community and health system partners to help build a better framework for innovating and implementing discoveries in ever more inclusive ways.”
Co-led by principal investigators D’Aquila; Sara Becker, PhD, the Alice Hamilton Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Clyde Yancy, MD, MSc, chief and Magerstadt Professor of Cardiology in the Department of Medicine, the Institute maintains its place as an anchor for Northwestern’s research enterprise.
“The collection of extraordinary faculty and staff who will manage this iteration of NUCATS are a testament to the transformational mindsets held by the institute’s leadership,” said Eric G. Neilson, MD, vice president for Medical Affairs and Lewis Landsberg Dean. “This funding allows us to further advance our mission of improving human health by investigating the mechanisms that drive the translation of discoveries toward real-world treatments.”
Awarded by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Science, the grant will fund activities that cultivate a culture of inclusive excellence to better capitalize on the full range of existing talent while enabling effective translation of discoveries for diverse populations. The Institute is also positioned to infuse implementation science methods into work across the translational continuum to improve public health and meet the needs of all.
“Implementation science can help us to accelerate and catalyze the uptake of evidence-based practice into routine clinical care,” said Becker, also director of Northwestern’s Center for Dissemination and Implementation Science (CDIS). “Northwestern is a national leader in this space. The NUCATS Institute will become a model CTSA hub that advances inclusive, innovative and implementable solutions to the evolving challenges that impede scalable public health progress.”
Yancy’s research in cardiology and health disparities addresses optimal treatment of heart failure. A seminal contribution was revealing that the predominant cause of heart failure among Black people is hypertension rather than the ischemic heart disease that is most often the putative cause in non-Black patients. His groundbreaking work informed how to optimize treatment strategies for Black patients including the first ever FDA-approved therapy for Black patients.
“Diversity in the biomedical workforce is more than representativeness; it is rather about excellence, diverse ideas and unique strategies that will enrich our ability to provide care for the entire population,” said Yancy, who is also vice dean for Diversity and Inclusion. “By addressing inequities with intentionality, we are positioned to understand and then overcome persistent systemic limitations that hurt those underrepresented and underserved and in turn impair best health for everyone. We commit to responsibly and courageously leading the path to inclusive excellence and belongingness.”
As one of more than 60 NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award-funded hubs, the NUCATS Institute is now charged with adding to generalizable knowledge about how to best accelerate new ideas and interventions into impact that improves health for all. The NIH calls this new charge conducting clinical and translational science, distinguishing it from an earlier charge to provide resources for all clinical and translational research.
“A core principle of translational science is to understand common causes of inefficiency and failure in translational research projects. One of the additional areas we will focus on — in collaboration with Northwestern’s Innovation and New Ventures Office and other partners — is better helping academic innovators to move discoveries from the laboratory through clinical trials and toward commercialization,” D’Aquila said.
Northwestern University and its affiliates the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and its Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and Northwestern Medicine comprise the NUCATS Institute. Clinicians and investigators at each affiliate are Northwestern faculty members and the partnering entities share a jointly operated, markedly grown academic medical center campus where faculty and trainees’ education, care and research activities cultivate a learning health system. The affiliates also have broad regional networks of sites/providers, facilitating community outreach. The NUCATS Institute will continue to serve as the glue that collaboratively aligns translational research and advances translational science across the four hub components.
The new CTSA activities are funded by NCATS grant UM1TR005121.