Advancing medical breakthroughs from bench to bedside

Dear University Community:

I am writing to share some very exciting news for the University at Buffalo.

This week, we were notified by the National Institutes of Health that the UB-led Buffalo Translational Consortium (BTC) has received a four-year, $16 million Clinical and Translational Science Award.

The grant will establish the UB Clinical and Translational Research Center as the hub of the Buffalo Translational Consortium. UB is the lead institution of the consortium in partnership with Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the Great Lakes Health System, UBMD and community health organizations.

This CTSA award—the first awarded to a SUNY institution—is a testament to the powerful impact that our education, research, and clinical care missions continue to have on our local and global communities. This prestigious CTSA award will play a vital role in advancing medical breakthroughs from bench to bedside and in speeding the delivery of new therapeutic drugs, diagnostic tools, and medical devices to patients.

With this grant, the UB-led Buffalo Translational Consortium, which will be housed at UB’s Clinical and Translational Research Center downtown, joins an elite tier of national research institutions. Currently, just 62 U.S. medical research institutions receive CTSA program funding from the NIH. As a member of this national consortium, UB and our BTC partners will be able to compete for the highly selective clinical research grants for which only CTSA institutions may apply. Even more importantly, we will have the means to profoundly expand our impact in advancing medical discovery and enhancing patient care in Western New York, across our state and nation, and around the world.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Michael Cain, Vice President for Health Sciences and Dean of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, as well as Dr. Timothy Murphy, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Medicine and principal investigator on the grant, and all of their colleagues involved in securing this major federal research award for UB and our medical campus partners.