RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – UNC-Chapel Hill, RTI International, N.C. A&T and new partner N.C. State have been awarded a five-year federal grant worth $58.1 million in a renewal of a program to deliver biomedical innovations available to North Carolina residents.
“This major award is good news for the health of all North Carolinians,” said UNC-Chapel Hill Vice Chancellor for Research Terry Magnuson. “It supports a critical pipeline that takes the latest scientific discoveries in our university labs and moves them into practice, leading to new treatments and new drugs that improve and save lives.”
The funding comes through the National Institutes of Health Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program.
“RTI is pleased and proud to continue our collaboration with UNC-Chapel Hill and our partners at the North Carolina Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute to advance the health and well-being of North Carolinians,” said Wayne Holden, CEO of RTI International. “This renewal grant enables us to advance translational science in North Carolina and execute on our mission—to improve the human condition by turning research into practice.”
The NIH program dates to 2006 and now includes more than 50 medical institutions, the goal being to “foster team science, leverage national resources and transform the conduct of biomedical research nation-wide.”
Among efforts supported by the grant will be the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute at UNC-CH, which launched in 2008. A key is its 4D (Drugs, Devices, and Diagnostics Development) Program.
Under a previous five-year grant, NC TraCS worked with over 350 practices, 130 community-based organizations, 88 percent of other CTSA hubs, and many non-CTSA universities, through pilot awards or other initiatives, according to UNC and RTI.
Moving forward, NC TraCS “will continue to move scientific advances from the laboratory into clinical practice quickly,” the partners said.
