Mayo Clinic Awarded $64 Million to Support Clinical and Translational Research

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic's Center for Translational Science Activities (CTSA) is looking ahead to another five years of research in Minnesota with the announcement of its grant renewal from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The five-year, $64.6 million award will fund CTSA efforts to develop new treatments and technologies, and ultimately improve community health and health care delivery. In addition, the funding supports a broad spectrum of training programs to develop the current and next generation of researchers.

"We are very pleased with the funding we have been awarded," says Robert Rizza, M.D., CTSA director, principal investigator and the Earl and Annette R. McDonough Professor at Mayo Clinic. "In this time of belt-tightening, to receive nearly all that we applied for indicates the confidence of the NIH in the continued success of our CTSA."

The CTSA makes much of Mayo's clinical research possible by providing infrastructure and support, including Mayo's four Clinical Research Units or CRUs, which serve as institutional laboratories for clinical trials. In the past five years, Mayo's CTSA has:

• Aided 30 discoveries that improved medical practice
• Cut the average approval time for studies in half, some by as much as three-fourths
• Increased CRU-based studies by 20 percent

Dozens of new courses support Mayo's postdoctoral, predoctoral and undergraduate translational science curricula. Nearly 300 individuals have graduated from the various programs, and more than 3,000 have participated in professional development and continuing education.

"The job of the CTSA is to speed the process of turning our laboratory discoveries into medications, treatments, and practice-changing knowledge," Dr. Rizza says. "Funding novel treatment and methodology research is one way we better meet the needs of our patients and our communities."

Those efforts and more continue under the new award. Among other activities, the CTSA will continue its work to eliminate barriers to translational research by streamlining regulatory and compliance support; providing outstanding design, biostatistics and ethics support; and integrating other services. Informatics will be employed in several new ways to integrate and facilitate clinical and translational research.

National, regional and community collaboration remains a priority as the CTSA seeks to improve health care delivery and community health. Collaborations are ongoing and others are planned with CTSA consortium members across the country, local and regional partners, and several members of NIH's Research Centers at Minority Institutions program.

The CTSA program is led by the National Center for Research Resources, part of the National Institutes of Health. The consortium is comprised of 60 institutions from 30 states and the District of Columbia. Mayo Clinic received one of the program's inaugural awards in 2006. The University of Minnesota recently received Minnesota's second award.

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