HMS Finds New Research Partner

Harvard Medical School announced Tuesday that it will launch a program later this month in conjunction with the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education to foster collaborative medical research and education and to develop infrastructure for health information sharing in Portugal.

The program, which will involve Portugal’s seven major medical schools and various major biomedical research laboratories, represents the culmination of a two-year planning and discussion process initiated by the Portuguese government, according to Tomas Kirchhausen, an HMS cell biology professor and one of the architects of the program.

One major goal of the collaboration is to expand translational research, which aims to apply the findings of basic science investigations to clinical practices and treatments.

Kirchhausen, who will serve as HMS Director of the HMS-Portugal Program, said that the new program would be funded entirely by the Portuguese government, although the precise amount has not yet been finalized.

“We’re all very interested and excited,” Kirchhausen said. “We’ve received many communications from people at Harvard and hospitals indicating how excited they were and asking how they could participate and collaborate.”

The program will last for five years, Kirchhausen said, although he said he hoped funding could be extended further. Plans currently include the creation of research teams composed of Harvard and Portuguese scientists, and opportunities for researchers and professors to travel between the two countries to teach and collaborate.

The program may also send a few undergraduates to Portugal each summer to work in labs, and Harvard’s Health Publications Division will help Portuguese health professionals produce and publish medical information for use by researchers and the general public.

In recent years, Harvard and other universities have increasingly funneled resources into promoting translational research.

Last summer, the University received a $117.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to found the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center. The center, part of a larger enterprise known as Harvard Catalyst, encourages collaboration among researchers and students throughout the University to understand disease mechanisms and devise new strategies to attack human illness.

Bjorn R. Olsen, an HMS cell biology professor and Dean for Research at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, said that translational research is, in some ways, the ultimate “goal of medical research.”

“There are major diseases that affect not only people in this country but worldwide, and need to be addressed,” Olsen said. “Translational research doesn’t belong to any individual nation—it belongs to mankind—so creating partnerships across national boundaries, across oceans, across disciplines, is very important to get this done.”

—Staff writer Peter F. Zhu can be reached at pzhu@fas.harvard.edu.