On the delicate balance between translational research and scientific freedom: a contribution from European research centres
How can research institutes and organisations reach the goal of transforming lab findings into clinical applications without undermining frontier science or infringing on the scientific freedom of their scientists?
Within the Translational Research Working Group of the EU-LIFE Alliance, thirteen research centres shared their experiences and good practices in bringing discoveries to innovative medicine, identified measures needed to stimulate these processes and suggested recommendations to promote translational research. Their conclusions appear in the September issue of the journal Trends in Molecular Medicine (link below).
“We all have the same challenge: to provide scientific freedom to our researchers while also translating fundamental findings into innovative applications in medicine. By sharing experiences, thoughts and actions, we identified some good practises and guidelines that we want to share with the scientific community and relevant stakeholders,” explains Michela Bertero, chair of the Translational Research working group in EU-LIFE and head of the International and Scientific Affairs Office at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, Spain.
The recommendations are aimed not only at research centres but also at policy makers and funding agencies, who according to the authors have a crucial role in the promotion of translational research, for example in promoting the creation of specific evaluation and rewarding systems for scientists doing translational research or promoting cultural changes among all players.
“We live in an exciting era in which basic discoveries are making their way to the clinic. Our societies and governments should commit to scientific research and make it a national priority. It has been a very interesting exercise to share experiences between all the EU-LIFE partners and to try to define these guidelines—a challenge that hopefully will help other institutions and organisations,” said Momo Bentires-Alj, group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) in Basel.
Link and reference to the article:
Bentires-Alj et al.: “Stimulating translational research: several European life science institutions put their heads together,” Trends in Molecular Medicine, 2015.