Accelerating the fight against disease

VIRTUAL HOME Harvard Catalyst's website at http://catalyst.harvard.edu makes it easy to identify researchers across the university with similar scientific interests, to tap into powerful technologies, and access expertise in a wide variety of fields.

What's the best, fastest route for turning new laboratory discoveries into patient therapies—and delivering them to people who need them most? What tool makes it possible to find, in a matter of minutes, all of the physicians, researchers, and students working on a particular disease or scientific challenge across Harvard's 11 schools and 17 affiliated hospitals and health care centers?

The answer is Harvard Catalyst.

Harvard Catalyst—also called the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center—is a virtual center created with $117 million in funds for patient-based (clinical) research awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008. This generous sum comes in lieu of smaller grants previously given annually by NIH to clinical research centers at four Harvard-affiliated hospitals. By establishing a single center, the grant aims to fuel collaboration among thousands of people across Harvard, to an unprecedented degree, according to HSPH Dean for Academic Affairs James H. Ware.

Harvard Medical School (HMS) took the lead in writing the grant proposal, Ware says. Supplemented with a pool of $75 million from Harvard institutions, the center's resources will be used in part to jump-start innovative pilot studies by young and highly promising investigators. In March, Harvard Catalyst announced $50,000 grants for 62 studies. Involved are several junior and senior faculty members at HSPH.

"A major goal is to train more physician-scientists, who are a rare breed today," Ware says. "Such individuals must be able to bridge the yawning gap between the laboratory and the patient."

In January, Harvard Catalyst's principal investigator, Lee Nadler, HMS Dean for Clinical and Translational Research, unveiled a powerful new online portal to help experts identify one another, search through all of their publications, and pool their ideas. The portal makes it easy to search for potential research partners by name, institution, and areas of interest. It also helps investigators access powerful technologies and blood and tissue samples, as well as tap into expertise in such fields as biostatistics, genetics, and imaging.

HSPH's Department of Biostatistics will guide the design of studies and the analysis of data, while its Division of Public Health Practice will deliver new findings to communities of patients in need. HSPH faculty members will also help teach physicians to launch and manage large-scale clinical trials.

For more information, visit http://catalyst.harvard.edu.

Karin Kiewra is the associate director of Development Communications at HSPH and editor of the Review.