From the bench to bedside to babies: translational medicine made possible by funding multidisciplinary team science

Abstract

Purpose: In 2005, The National Institutes of Health (NIH) called upon the scientific community to identify the most intractable problems in science and medicine and describe how we would solve these problems using teams.

Methods: Our group was one of 8 research communities awarded an 'interdisciplinary research consortium (IRC) grant.' Using the infrastructure of this large, multi-institute grant and a team science approach, we set out to solve the problem of fertility loss in young female cancer patients-work that was not easily funded through other mechanisms.

Results: The word 'oncofertility' was coined specifically for the IRC to reflect the intimate partnership between oncology care and fertility care for these patients-two disciplines that would no longer function at arms' length, but as an integrated unit. Catalyzed by the IRC funding mechanism, interdisciplinary teams worked together in unique ways to create a 'bench to bedside to baby' outcome.

Conclusions: The grant has now ended, and remarkably, so have the most intractable parts of the original problem. As we look back on what worked and look forward to tackling the next set of fertility-related questions, we are confident that this very special NIH funding mechanism made a meaningful difference in the lives of women and their future children. NIH and the public would be well-served by supporting clinical problem-based, multidisciplinary team science approaches to catalyze fundamental biomedical breakthroughs and create new intellectual environments in which changes in clinical practice and standard of care can be implemented.

Fig. 1

The emergence of a new field. Metrics of team science were evaluated for ‘fertility preservation,’ ‘cancer,’ and ‘oncofertility,’ and in-depth surveys were completed by members of these communities. Four conclusions were reached about the nature of team science in these areas: (1) there was minimal work published in this field in 2000; (2) by 2005, the field began emerging (e.g., larger teams with groups of researchers published articles together); (3) by 2010, many research groups had formed with increasing collaboration across cliques; and (4) in 2012, strong networks connected oncofertility researchers, clinical practitioners, patients, students, humanists, and patient advocates. Contractor and Uzzi, unpublished results, used with permission