As far as buzz words go in the life science community, "translational research" has had a pretty long lifespan. Transforming laboratory-hatched ideas into lucrative commercial products has, is, and will be a holy grail sought by scientists and business types alike. But successes in the field of translational research are few and far between. One of the most notable burnouts befell Icelandic genetics company deCODE, which assembled an impressive genomic database, and identified several key disease-causing genes, before investors got antsy and left the company bankrupt before it could reach its lofty goal of turning that genomic data into therapies or diagnostics.
Cambridge Research Institute cancer researcher Ian Mills, and chair of the UK's National Health Service London, Sir Richard Sykes, dissect the failings of deCODE and discuss the future of translational research in an editorial published in this week's Science Translational...
Image courtesy of Lonza Ltd. |
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