Translational Infrastructure Is Collaborative
CCR was formed in 2001 to integrate basic and clinical research by encouraging cooperation across the organization to translate discoveries in CCR labs into treatments at the NIH Clinical Research Center. A translational infrastructure makes this possible.
Translational Teams
CCR's translational infrastructure includes focused Centers of Excellence, Faculties, and Working Groups that leverage the expertise of scientists on-site at CCR and at sister NIH Institutes along with the extramural talent of researchers in academia and industry.
Collaborative Networks Enable Team Science
The Centers of Excellence
- Chromosome Biology
- Immunology
- HIV/AIDS and Cancer Virology
- Molecular Oncology
- Integrative Cancer Biology and Genomics
Centers of Excellence lead new initiatives, projects, and collaborations. They position the NCI to play a significant role in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary translational research and accelerate our progress against cancer and AIDS.
Faculties and Working Groups
- Discipline-based
- Approach-based
- Disease-based
Faculties and Working Groups foster collaboration, provide awareness of and access to new technologies and clinical resources, and encourage basic scientists to become more knowledgeable and involved in clinical and translational research.
Center of Excellence Spearheads Trans-NIH Partnership
IL-15, a broad stimulant for both innate and adaptive immune response
Illustration of IL-15.
CCR researchers:
- Discovered two of the three receptor components for IL-15
- Demonstrated that IL-15 enhances effectiveness of therapeutic cancer vaccines
- Developed new treatments for graft rejection, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis using antibodies to a subunit of the IL-15 receptor
Partnered with NIAID:
- Initiated GMP (good manufacturing practices) production of IL-15 for both intramural and extramural clinical trials
Disease-based Faculty Use Multidisciplinary Approach to Cancer
CCR's von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) Research
A team of CCR scientists has made significant progress in understanding kidney cancer: from observation in clinic/pedigree, to identification of genes and pathways involved, to DNA diagnostic tests for inherited forms of kidney cancer, to treatment options.
CCR Investigators Publish Collaboratively
47 percent of CCR’s published research involves extramural scientists
CCR scientists partner within CCR and NIH as well as with scientists at universities, medical schools, hospitals, government agencies, and other nonprofit and for-profit research facilities in the United States and abroad.
Rewarding Team Science
CCR review of team science serves as a model
Solving the complexities of cancer requires scientists to move beyond their own disciplines and explore new ways to conduct team science.
Extramural review teams now consider:
- Principal investigator’s role and responsibility in multidisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary research
- Leadership role or key contributions to the team
- Quality of overall science
- Degree of contributions
- Originality of contributions
- How the contributions impact the overall project
- Whether a component(s) can be distinctly attributed to the principal investigator
Serving Others
CCR community-minded researchers:
- Participate in numerous CCR, NCI, and NIH initiatives and projects
- Are members and leaders in scientific associations
- Participate in strategic planning for NIH, NCI, and CCR
- Actively serve on search committees to recruit highly qualified junior faculty
- Support the Children’s Inn and NIH activities
