TRM4002 - Translational research - 2017

Translational research is a growing and exciting new discipline in medicine that deals with the development of fundamental scientific findings into tangible clinical outcomes. Translational researchers are involved in identifying a worthwhile scientific finding that can be applied to a clinical setting. Along this research and development pipeline are a series of critical check-points that provide the investigator vital tools to generate a valuable result that has merit for translation. This unit will establish a fundamental knowledge in the processes involved in developing a basic science finding through to clinical studies. The unit provides workshop-based learning in the development of discipline-specific laboratory research questions and how they are applied to broader clinical applications. The main focus of this unit is to identify how fundamental scientific questions may have multidisciplinary clinical answers. Other core learning outcomes are through understanding how scientific concepts can be marketed and communicated effectively through research pipeline procedures and the responsibilities of the researcher that may be derived from this.

Upon successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. Identify the pathways to commercialisation and compare the translation of research conducted primarily through universities with that of industry.
2. Define the criteria for engaging in contract research projects with stakeholders from industry, government and academia.
3. Discuss Good Laboratory and Good Manufacturing Practice in the context of commercialising protein and bio-product research.
4. Apply Good Laboratory and Good Manufacturing Practice to the stages of scale-up, production and downstream processing of a bio-product.
5. Identify and select platform technologies appropriate to a specific multi-disciplinary research project.
6. Outline the key criteria for assessing promising drug candidates during the discovery process and discuss these using recently developed pharmaceutical examples.

• Essay 1: Intellectual property & commercialisation (1,500 words) (25%)
• Essay 2: Bioprocessing/bioinformatics/biobanking/bioimaging/phenomics (1,500 words) (25%)
• Media release - executive summary (500 words) (10%)
• Online self-directed learning tasks (6 x 5% = 30%)
• Online test (1 hour) (10%)

On-campus: Approximately 60 contact hours either face-to-face workshops or online modules. The remaining 84 hours (7 hours per week over a 12 week period) is made up of private study time completing online exercises, 3 major assignments and an end of semester online test.

See also Unit timetable information

Dr Steven Petratos

Translational research

Students need to have completed and passed a minimum of 96 credit points in an undergraduate Science Discipline programme prior to enrolling in this unit.