The Keck School of Medicine of USC and SC CTSI are part of an interdisciplinary team that has been selected to participate in the exclusive Coulter Translational Research Partnership program, intended to focus on outcomes that will save, extend, and improve patients’ lives.

Announced recently by the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, the prestigious program awards pioneering institutions that are fostering tomorrow’s translational technologies and innovations in biomedical health care. The team, led by the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, includes the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation.

"This important award is another example of the value of the collaboration between our schools," said Keck School Dean Carmen A. Puliafito. "The synergy of ideas made possible by this award has the potential to be of significant benefit to patients."

The Coulter Foundation invited the USC Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) to apply for the award based on its number of successful applicants to the Coulter Translational Research Awards. After an arduous application process, only six Departments of BME from across the country were invited to attend the launch of the program in Las Vegas this past February.  Finally, Coulter selected the USC team to participate in the program based on its performance at the launch.

The prestigious program awards pioneering institutions that are fostering tomorrow’s translational technologies and innovations in biomedical health care.

“We are very excited to have you as a partner in this challenging but most rewarding endeavor as we embark together in the journey of accelerating the translation of biomedical innovations to benefit patient care,” read the Foundation’s announcement.

For its operations, the program will have $1 million each year for a period of five years, with $667,000 a year from the Coulter Foundation augmented by $333,000 in contributions from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, the SC CTSI, and the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation. 

The Coulter Foundation will form a working partnership with USC to promote translational research.

The new program will promote increasing the number of effective collaborations between biomedical engineers and clinicians. The Coulter grant targets and fosters promising technologies that will translate into direct clinical application. The Foundation’s broad mandate addresses suffering from any disease or condition, in any size market, in any discipline, in any country around the world.

“This award is a testament to the national leadership of our Biomedical Engineering department in translational biomedical engineering research,” said Yannis C. Yortsos, Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. “The program will contribute to solving pressing societal health issues. It also fits well with the strategic plan of our BME Department, the Viterbi School of Engineering and complements the University’s vision to support interdisciplinary and translational research.”

Norberto Grzywacz, professor and chair of the Viterbi School’s Department of BME led the collaborative effort as its principal investigator (PI).  The co-PIs were Thomas Buchanan, professor of Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, associate dean of Clinical Research at the Keck School, and director of the CTSI, and Krisztina “Z” Holly, vice provost for Innovation and executive director of the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation. The team also included Richard Hull, senior director for New Ventures and Alliances at the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation.

“This is an outstanding opportunity to create the new interdisciplinary research teams to develop new approaches to diagnose and treat human disease,” said Buchanan. “SC CTSI was designed to do just that. We are both proud and excited to be part of the USC partnership that won this prestigious award.”

The program co-directors are Christine Matheson from the CTSI Center for Scientific Translation and Juan Felipe Vallejo, director of Innovation Development at the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation. The grant will be administered by the USC Viterbi BME Department. The program oversight committee will include Carlos Pato, professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at Keck, and director of the CTSI Office for Research Development, Terrence Sanger, provost associate professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neurology, and academic director of the new Health, Technology and Engineering program at USC (HTE@USC), Jonathan Lasch, director of the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering (AMI), and Roberta Diaz Brinton, professor of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and director of the CTSI Center for Scientific Translation, in addition to Grzywacz, Buchanan and Holly.  The oversight committee will also include three other members who will be venture capitalists, active life science angel investors or entrepreneurs with substantial experience in the medical device/diagnostic or life science industry.

“This program harnesses critical gap funding, expertise, and focus to move USC’s breakthrough biomedical engineering ideas into positive societal impact.” said Holly.

“We are thrilled to be working with the Coulter Foundation; this partnership is a key new piece of our interdisciplinary approach to innovation here at USC.The Keck School of Medicine of USC and the Los Angeles Basin Clinical Translational Science Institute (CTSI) are part of an interdisciplinary team that has been selected to participate in the exclusive Coulter Translational Research Partnership program, intended to focus on outcomes that will save, extend, and improve patients’ lives.

The original article was published on the USC Keck SOM website