Translational Neurosciences and Population Studies

About

Translational Neurosciences and Population Studies is an interprofessional and interdisciplinary division within the Department of Neurology. Our mission is to implement clinical, translational and population research for neurological conditions and risks; facilitate interventions through clinical network and community engagement; and produce education resources for health care providers at all levels. The Division maintains a commitment to reducing gaps in health disparities.

Contributions to Research, Therapies, and Policy

Our researchers and studies have directly contributed to the development of therapies for neurological disease, including:

• Hypertension awareness, treatment and control for stroke

The Challenge

There has never been a more exciting time to explore, understand and treat disorders of the nervous system.

The tools now available to understand neurological disorders offer an unprecedented opportunity to identify disease targets and develop and test novel therapies that could revolutionize treatment.

But to bring this revolution to light, we need to build on our translational programs to close the gap between discoveries made in the research lab and clinical treatments for patients.

The Innovation

The Division combines disciplines to bring advances in research studies from early discovery to human clinical trials. These team-based collaborations will be able to identify and develop new therapies in consideration of disease mechanisms. Further, the Division uses the accomplishments of scientific and clinical knowledge for translational neurosciences to leverage the successful track record in translation of clinical practice, population health, and policy.

Division Components

Preclinical discovery and development

• Discovery of disease mechanism: investigate cell-specific disease mechanism

Pre-clinical development

• Develop novel therapeutics
• Develop in vitro assays and high throughput

Clinical translation

• Establish a Clinical Translation Core to design and perform human clinical  trials using medical and surgical specialties

Population Health

Establish and maintain population-based epidemiology data bases.

Community Engagement

Maintain and sustain community-engagement

Educate and Train translational scientists and clinicians

• Faculty for Masters of Science in Clinical Research Program and Certificate in Clinical Research

Faculty