Entrepreneurs -- missing link in training medical scientists - SF Chron

[Coastie for Truth]

Ours is an age of almost unprecedented scientific achievement. Still, turning laboratory advances into medical therapies has proved surprisingly difficult. While our universities have little trouble churning out basic researchers or skilled clinicians, we seem unable to train -- or even identify -- those who might specialize in bridging the gap between lab and patient.

A solution may yet be within easy grasp -- if only we are able to recognize it. For so-called translational research is exactly what is happening every day in the dozens of start-up companies that dot the landscape of San Francisco and other university centers. These companies are exclusively focused on turning science into application, and they represent an entrepreneur's best effort at solving this problem. The question now is whether academic leaders can overcome their intrinsic distrust of the private sector and embrace the very real opportunities that exist just beyond their ivy walls.

Basic research -- in which the pursuit of an interesting question is its own reward -- sits squarely at the top of the academic research hierarchy. In the United States, most basic research in the life sciences is funded by the National Institutes of Health, based on the reasonable assumption that in order to understand disease, you first must understand the biology behind it.

It has become increasingly apparent, however, that translating research into application is neither easy nor inevitable; it requires both a unique type of investigator and also a unique environment, where the pursuit of such questions is valued and encouraged. While some exceptionally talented translational researchers exist at university medical centers, they are certainly hard to come by; hence, the recent push by both medical foundations and the NIH to cultivate this specific category of researcher. (emphasis added)

Edited to comply with the "Fair Use" provisions of the Copyright Code--

Dr. David A. Shaywitz is an endocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. This commentary appeared originally in the Boston Globe.

Appenders comment:

This is not a theoretical issue. In California the launch of stem cell research under our Proposition 71 is being held up by just these "translational" issues - along with patent royalties and Bayh-Dole questions and "March In Rights" questions.

Like Boston, and the NYC-Princeton-Philadelphia corridor, and the Baltimore-Washington-Northern Virginia corridor, and North Carolina's Research Triangle, and Austin - we think we're pretty good at "translating" academic research into real stuff. But, it's an issue because "Public money is a public trust."

Yes - I know "Bayh-Dole" is Federal Law - but we have clones it into our Stem Cell Research statutes and regulations -- along with the whole body of regulations and "common law."