Translational Research in a Global Competitive Scientific Market

Published 9 August 2016

On May 23-24, the second edition of the Translate! Conference was held in Berlin. The conference is a joint initiative from Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT), a cooperation between Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, and the Berlin Institute of Health, together with the scientific journal, Science Translational Medicine (STM).

During the conference, international experts from USA, Singapore, Canada but also Europe discussed current challenges of translational medicine through cutting-edge lectures, presentations and interactive breakout sessions. Five different breakout sessions were held in smaller groups to discuss “hot topics” from the field, such as mentoring the next generation of translational researchers, improving utility and predictivity of animal models or solutions for integrating translational research into the clinical practice. The conference highlighted innovative funding models for high-risk projects, such as the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco (USA). The programme also inevitably tackled the challenge of reproducibility, with Barbara Casadei (University of Oxford) who suggested some solutions such as the commitment to publish negative data.

Last but not least, EATRIS staff was lucky to exchange with peers on another of the key questions of the conference: the need to train young researchers at graduate and postdoctoral level in translational research. EATRIS had the opportunity to share its competency profile for translational scientists, developed as part of the C-COMEND project (funded by the Erasmus + programme). We are very much looking forward the next edition!

More information: http://www.science-translate.com