About translational research
Discoveries made by researchers do not only contribute to finding more effective treatments, they also enable prevention and early diagnosis of disease. However, research normally takes years to materialise into new diagnostic procedures and therapies, and the process is slow and costly.
Fero Foundation supports translational research. The differential aspect of this model is the transmission of results of basic research to clinical applications. Integrating these two areas enables development times for new drugs to be shortened and helps patients to benefit sooner from scientific advances against cancer.
Basic research is conducted without any immediate practical purpose, in order to expand knowledge in a given specific area. Only some of the knowledge acquired manages to make it into the next phase, preclinical research. Once this second phase has been completed, clinical trials begin and only subsequently is the work implemented in daily clinical practice. This process is both slow and costly.
Translational research seeks to bridge the gap which has traditionally existed between laboratories and clinical practice through leadership and collaboration between all the players involved with the aim of making discoveries get to cancer patients as soon as possible.
This approach places the emphasis on eliminating barriers to multidisciplinary collaboration between laboratories and clinical researchers and includes several interrelated phases which involve multiple disciplines, centres and professionals, both in research and medicine. Translational research enables the questions arising through clinical practice to be posed to laboratories in order to seek answers and, conversely, facilitate a rapid transmission of laboratory findings to clinical practice.