Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Regenerative medicine (RM) is an interdisciplinary field of research and clinical application which focuses on the repair, replacement or regeneration of cells, tissues or organs. For my PhD thesis I will analyse how scientific discovery in RM translates into new medical treatments and therapies and how scientific and medical knowledge interact during this translational process. I will conduct a series of case studies of regenerative medicine laboratories involved in translational biomedical research to better understand the relationships and processes. RM research appears to draw heavily on both scientific and clinical knowledge, making it an ideal field to analyse interactions between these two knowledge types. These case studies will detail the incentives and support, as well as the impediments, experienced by scientists and clinicians in translating research to medicine. I posit that differences exist between clinicians and scientists in value systems and organisational and reward structures and that these differences often impede the translation of biomedical knowledge from research to application. My project will explore whether these impediments exist and develop a series of practices and policies to decrease obstacles and facilitate the translation of biomedical research to medicine. This has significant implications for Canada's health delivery system. Part of the CIHR mandate is to translate new knowledge into improved health for Canadians. If barriers exist in this translation process, ideas for potentially life saving novel treatments may not be getting from the bench to the bedside. My project aims to increase the efficiency of the process through which new scientific ideas become medical therapies to help treat Canadians.