A project designed to connect researchers, create a study network and support collaboration between academia, the private sector, communities and the government entered a new five-year phase, with the renewal of a federal grant that will provide $25 million to promote scientific research on the island.
The Alliance for Clinical and Translational Research was formally born five years ago, directed from the Medical Sciences Campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), in collaboration with the Central Caribbean University (UCC) and the Ponce Health Sciences University (PHSU).
“The grant supports a network of institutions, including health institutions, academic institutions and clinical centers in Puerto Rico, to conduct clinical research on topics important to the Puerto Rican population, such as cancerchronic diseases, mental health and oral health”explained the dentist and doctor in Microbiology Evangelia Morouwho is also a professor at the School of Dental Medicine of Medical Sciences.
The $25 million grant, awarded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spans a five-year cycle. Morou is one of the main researchers, along with Dr. Valerie Wojnaneurologist and professor at the School of Medicine of Medical Sciences.
The seed for the creation of the Alliance was sown 20 years ago with various projects, under other names, that sought to promote clinical research in Puerto Rico, Morou said.
“To improve people’s health, it cannot only be (the work of) the academy. Broader collaboration is required between everyone: academia, clinical professionals, health organizations, governments and communities, to improve people’s health.he expressed.
In the past five years, they supported more than 400 studies, he said, under the direction of Dr. Carlos Luciano. Although Morou and Wojna are the principal researchers, they have more than a dozen researchers from the three universities in charge of specialized units to support the research network.
“We have different centers to promote and sustain the research of young researchers, to increase the number of young researchers in clinical and translational research, as well as in community research on our island, Puerto Rico. These centers will offer the support that researchers will need to carry out research,” explained Wojna.
“We will have the resources of laboratories, nurses and clinical facilities to care for our patients. We will have pilot and development projects, a course for the training of these new researchers, as well as funds for them to generate their preliminary data and eventually become independent researchers”he added.
Morou explained, meanwhile, that the Alliance connects researchers with the goal of greater representation of Puerto Rico in clinical research projects, as well as in US databases.
Clinical research, he specified, is that which is carried out with human beings to study diseases or treatments.
“Translational research seeks to translate basic scientific findings into clinical practice. (For example), a researcher identifies a protein, a biomarker, that he or she believes is important for diabetes. The next translational research will recruit people with the condition to determine if this biomarker is aggravating the disease. So the translational model is what translates basic findings from the laboratory into clinical practice in order to develop clinical interventions.”Morou explained.
The idea, Wojna explained, is to then put these clinical interventions into practice in the communities.
The Alliance has become a key piece in connecting researchers, laboratories, academic institutions and community health care centers that would not otherwise communicate with each other, Wojna said.
“Without the Alliance, translational clinical research would be very difficult to carry out, we offer the necessary infrastructure for this. Without the Alliance, this will not be possible. And, especially for young researchers just starting out, who need the support, training and resources, it will be impossible to do so. And again, it’s been crucial to have this funding at this time”, he indicated.
Wojna pointed out that the million-dollar subsidy becomes more relevant given the adjustments and cuts in funding for scientific and medical research.
Morou explained that researchers or scientific facilities interested in collaborating with the Alliance can obtain the necessary information and communicate with them through their website: alliance.rcm.upr. Among the requirements, he indicated that, in the case of researchers, they must integrate the faculty of the universities in the Alliance or be part of a project that involves a member.