UCL/WT Translational Partnership 2018 - Widening Participation & Enhancing Translational Culture (360G-Wellcome-214046_Z_18_Z)

The biomedical translational strategy of UCL and its partner hospitals is based upon harnessing the wealth of talent and ideas across disciplines to make a difference to patients and their families. Through supporting the pursuit of excellence in the universities tripartite mission “Research, Education and Innovation” we enhance the knowledge, culture and support available for translation. The challenges which we are hoping to address with support from the WT through this application relate to a number of themes connected with the size and scale of translation that occurs at UCL (over 1,100 PIs in the School of Life and Medical Sciences alone) and its partner hospitals (UCLH, Royal Free, Great Ormond Street, Moorfields, Stanmore and the Whittington). - Scale of activity – Often compounded by a lack of understanding amongst researchers about the complexity of translation; Lack of knowledge in commercial transactions, technology transfer, IP, contracting, licensing - Lack of suitable databases to link infrastructure support i.e. coordinated project portfolio management and capacity planning tool - Organisational structures and incentives that do not encourage the teamwork essential to translational science – a need to further resource the UCL translational infrastructure - Limited funding for pilot data as opposed to proof-of-concept data