Translational Research: Role for the Clinical Laboratory Professional?

Given the lack of a precise definition, and aided by a fluidity of application whereby observations made at the bench are “translated” to the bedside and vice versa, many can claim to conduct translational research. To quote Dr. Steven Woolf in a 2008 commentary published in the Journal of the American Medical Association , “Translational research means different things to different people, but it seems important to almost everyone” (1). In the early 2000s, the Institute of Medicine's Clinical Research Roundtable classified translational research into 2 major blocks. T1 is defined as “the transfer of new understandings of disease mechanisms gained in the laboratory into the development of new methods for diagnosis, therapy, and prevention and their first testing …