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Translational Research: using the laboratory to dissect global disease
Alissa Myrick, Ph.D.
HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria. Pick a disease. Any disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 3.1 million people died from AIDS last year. HIV and TB make lethal companions, speeding the progression to severe disease. Over 21 million people around the world are coinfected with HIV and TB; with over 70% of coinfected people living in Africa. 90% of the estimated 1 million people who died from malaria last year were African children under the age of 5. The numbers do not do justice to the devastation caused by these three pathogens. So what can a scientist do to help reduce the loss of life?
All of the diseases listed above are under intense scientific investigation. Researchers are dissecting every aspect of their biology from pathogenesis to drug resistance to host immunity. All of these questions require a lot of time in the lab, but eventually, they require some time in the field. More and more, scientists are finding that their research questions can be informed by data from “the field”, i.e. data collected from studies of real people in the real world. While science traditionally has focused on highly controlled environments to answer an isolated question, translational research attempts to “translate” scientific findings into urgently needed clinical applications. One example of this would be conducting efficacy trials of different malaria drug combinations in African children. The definition of the most effective drug combination would include variables such as: how many times a child had to be dosed, tolerance to the drug, cost of the drug, access to the drug. In other words, there is more to think about than the pharmacodynamics of a drug. Disease does not exist in a vacuum.
Basic scientists are becoming more involved in translational research as biotechnology becomes available on a global scale. There is a growing opportunity for young scientists to help build the scientific capacity in countries that are burdened with many of these diseases. Indeed, local scientists and physicians understand the urgency of combating these diseases more than anyone else; and it is essential that public health and biomedical infrastructures are strengthened in many of these countries.
Alongside capacity building, researching “neglected diseases” such as malaria and TB is as fascinating as it is challenging. Extracting RNA from malaria parasites that were just taken from a patient’s blood in a basic laboratory in Uganda is very different from doing the same experiment on lab strains in the U.S. There are far more variables involved in studying the expression levels of genes in the field isolates, but the findings are doubly interesting because they represent what the parasite is doing in it’s natural environment. There are so many more questions to be answered. So, pick a disease. Any disease.
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