The Duke Translational Medicine Institute was established in October 2006 with a grant from the National Institutes of Health to speed the translation of new scientific discoveries into clinical practice, promote measurable improvements in community health, and make personalized medicine a reality.

Translational medicine is the shaping of scientific discoveries into technologies or therapies that can be tested, ensuring that they are useful and not harmful, and then using the new knowledge to improve health.

That’s the ultimate aim of translational medicine -- to improve health.

There are two big blocks in translational medicine. The first is speeding up the process from discovery of a drug or device into technology that can be tested, and the second block is getting a medicine or device deployed in the community so that it actually improves people’s health.

To translate a discovery into something useful requires an organized approach to the use of technologies. At Duke, we have most of these technologies, but we need to use them more effectively. The Duke Translational Medicine Institute will help us facilitate the goals of the faculty and of the institution, and pull together all the components of translational research.

The DTMI serves as the administrative umbrella for a diverse group of Duke entities:

• The Duke Translational Research Institute
• The Duke Clinical Research Institute
  
• The Duke Center for Community Research
• The Duke Clinical Research Unit