NIH Awards $70M to NC TraCS

The North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute has been awarded a seven-year, $70 million grant by the National Institutes of Health, which will accelerate high-impact research that improves human health and advances health equity. 

The successful grant application is a partnership between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC State University and North Carolina A&T State University. NC TraCS supports, funds and connects the translational research community — and brings together researchers across disciplines from UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State and NC A&T.

“NC TraCS has proven to be a powerful partnership that’s delivered immense value to not only the faculty and students at each of the universities involved but also to everyday North Carolinians, as well as clinical and translational researchers and healthcare workers alike around the nation,” said Jon Horowitz, associate vice chancellor for research infrastructure and development at NC State.

Since its inception, NC TraCS has fundamentally changed the clinical and translational research landscape. And its outreach efforts have touched each of North Carolina’s 100 counties; of recent note, for example, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic NC TraCS mobilized its expertise and infrastructure to rapidly generate new knowledge and interventions.

This latest grant to NC TraCS, the academic hub of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program at the UNC School of Medicine, will provide continued funding for the institute — and also renews UNC’s membership in the CTSA Program, an elite consortium of academic medical research institutions working together to transform the way biomedical research is conducted across the country, funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. 

“This continued funding will allow NC TraCS to continue their groundbreaking work, make new discoveries, and grow their impact by embodying our commitment to collaboration that solves the grand challenges of our time,” UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said in a news release.

NC TraCS will use the grant funding to examine the science of translational science. 

The focus of the new grant is to generate information that would be broadly applicable to different research groups, such as models that can predict which patients might suffer from a certain disease or treatment complication — tools that are valuable but often underused by clinicians. NC TraCS will provide support, resources and expertise to researchers who plan to study the best way to bring the power of these models to patients — and help chart the best course of treatment, a process known as “wayfinding.”

“This new cycle of funding reflects our dedication to streamlining translational and clinical research for the benefit of our patients in North Carolina and beyond,” said Blossom Damania, vice dean for research at the UNC School of Medicine.

To learn more about the $70 million NIH grant to NC TraCS, read this news release. To learn more about NC TraCS, visit tracs.unc.edu.