Translational Biomedicine: a clinician’s view

Lawrence Leung
Centre of Studies in Primary Care Queen’s University, Kingston Ontario, Canada.

We all know what translation is all about in language when you need to express ideas and concepts from one common set of symbols and semantics to another set. How about in science and medicine? Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “translational research” as “medical research that is concerned with facilitating the practical application of scientific discoveries to the development and implementation of new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease.” Professor Lee Nadler, senior vice president for Experimental Medicine at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute also epitomises a translational researcher as “someone who takes something from basic research to a patient and measures an endpoint in a patient”. That undoubtedly has been the a leading definition and scope for translational research in the last decade, a bench-to-bedside (N2B) mode as I would call it. But is that the whole picture for translational research? Or, should this be only direction that we use?

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