Translational Medicine Alliance Ireland
Translational Medicine Alliance Ireland catalyses the development of productive translational research collaborations under one umbrella to maximise the exploitation of complementary strengths and drive clinical innovations.
GOVERNANCE
Who are TMAI?
TMAI is organised as a decentralised collaborative network of Irish Universities with specialised centres in the fields of advanced therapy medicinal products, biomarkers, imaging and tracing, small molecules and vaccines. The aim of TMAI is to catalyse the development of productive inter-institutional partnerships that exploit our multidisciplinary research strengths, facilities, and technological capabilities to translate clinical research into exploitable outcomes with practical healthcare applications. To capitalise on these productive research clusters the following goals are underway:
- Undertake projects and activities that promote innovation and the development of translational medicine initiatives within Ireland;
- Provide a supportive ecosystem to enhance engagement between clinicians, scientists and industry aimed at tackling important healthcare challenges and surmounting systemic barriers across all stages of the translational pathway;
- Set and define scientific priorities to provide input into strategic research agendas and forthcoming EU projects and programmes;
- Promote harmonisation and interoperability between partners to exploit and capitalise on existing research capabilities and more effectively participate in national and international initiatives to leverage funding opportunities;
- Establish thematic working groups focused on the European Infrastructure for Translational Medicine (EATRIS) platforms and strategic priority areas, making an effort to involve all the actors concerned;
- Provide a gateway for indigenous and international industry partner engagement aimed at developing strong collaborations and jointly deliver improved healthcare outcomes;
- Assisting TMAI members in matchmaking partners for participating in new common projects at the National and European levels; and,
- Increase numbers of clinically-literate basic scientists and medics equipped with an extensive understanding of disease and clinical research skills aimed at enhancing translational activities.
While TMAI promotes multidisciplinary clinical research capabilities to expeditiously unlock potential treatment benefits for patients; such efforts are bolstered by engagement at a European level with EATRIS. The mission of EATRIS is to support researchers in developing their biomedical discoveries for novel preventive, diagnostic or therapeutic products up to clinical proof of concept. EATRIS provides a foundational level of support to TMAI as a consequence of TCD’s prior engagement on a research programme called EATRIS-Plus, which aims to develop multi-omic technologies for Personalised Medicine. To fully avail of EATRIS services, TMAI will seek full membership to maximise international opportunities and engagement around translational research.
More about EATRIS
EATRIS is a not-for-profit organisation currently supported by 14 European member states, and regroups 150 academic research institutes and university medical around a common mission: accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into patient benefit. EATRIS’ activities focus on early stages of research (pre-clinical, early clinical) where the risk of failure is particularly high and the need for multi-stakeholder engagement crucial. Priorities include foster public-private partnerships, overcome barriers to health innovation, train the next generation of translational scientists and innovation leaders and improve the research and innovation ecosystem.
