Washington University's School of Medicine has received a $61 million federal grant to support the infrastructure to complete biomedical research studies, officials said Thursday.
The grant, from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), supports WashU's Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS).
The five-year grant, a renewal, allows the ICTS to continue to serve as "an engine of innovation" in the region's clinical and translational research, with a focus on precision medicine, health equity and diversity, officials said.
The ICTS, established in 2007, supports nearly 1,800 researchers at WashU and about 530 investigators at other regional institutions, including BJC HealthCare, Saint Louis University, the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis, and the University of Missouri-Columbia.
WashU's ICTS provides investigators with funding for personnel, training, lab space, equipment and seed grants to help speed a research discovery into the development of new therapies, officials said.
“The most important work that our ICTS has handled over the past five years was, without a doubt, our response to the Covid-19 pandemic,” Dr. William Powderly, ICTS director and associate dean for clinical and translational research, said in a statement. “Through the ICTS, we have the infrastructure that can allow translational science to flourish and, at the same time, position us to respond well to a national emergency caused by brand-new infectious diseases.”
Powderly added that community advisers working with ICTS investigators played critical roles in helping WashU implement Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials and later, vaccine delivery across the St. Louis region.
“Many times, people understand that if they participate in research, they won’t necessarily benefit directly themselves, but they still want to know what happened — what the study concluded,” Powderly stated. “So, it’s important for us to cultivate relationships in the community so that we can tell the whole story, returning what we’ve learned to the people who helped us make these discoveries in the first place. We have a responsibility to make sure that results go back to patients and families so they can see the value of the research they or their loved ones are participating in.”