ABSTRACT
The concept of translational medicine emerged almost 20 years ago at the National Institutes of Health to find new solutions to a drug development pipeline suffering from chronically high failure rates and increasing costs of bringing a novel drug onto the market. In this ever-changing field, the need for validated biomarkers has been increasing (e.g., to discriminate responders from nonresponders for a given intervention or for a biomarker supporting a drug development decision). Given the complexity and heterogeneity of many of the diseases, successful translation must rely upon a multitude of disciplines, technologies and patient-related resources in order to triangulate the therapeutic strategies. However, it is nowadays clear that no single organization can systematically and successfully bring these varied disciplines and resources together under a single corporate roof. Only through collaborations can an organization access the resources and knowledge essential for advancing projects toward the clinic. Collaboration across boundaries is an important opportunity, and long-term partnering and commitment among stakeholders is the only way to foster knowledge exchange and to promote real advancements not only at project levels, but also in the entire field where real effort needs to be made to solve long-term bottlenecks and prevent undesired duplication of efforts.
