National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)
Abbreviation	NCATS
Formation	December 23, 2011
Type	U.S. government agency
Legal status	Active
Headquarters	Bethesda, Maryland, US
Director	Joni L. Rutter
Parent organization	National Institutes of Health
Affiliations	United States Public Health Service
Website	ncats.nih.gov

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) was established on December 23, 2011^[1] and is located in Bethesda, Maryland. NCATS is one of 27 institutes and centers of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The mission of NCATS is to transform scientific discoveries into new treatments and cures for disease that can be delivered faster to patients. The budget provided to NCATS for fiscal year 2018 is $557,373,000.^[2]

History

NCATS was created on December 23, 2011 by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012.^[3]

The center was created from a number of existing NIH programs:^[4]

Directors

Past directors 2011 – present^[7]

Director	Took office	Left office
Thomas R. Insel (acting)	December 23, 2011	September 22, 2012
Christopher P. Austin	September 23, 2012	April 15, 2021
Joni L. Rutter	April 16, 2021	Present

Divisions

NCATS is organized into a number of divisions:

Division of Clinical Innovation
Division of Pre-Clinical Innovation
Office of Administrative Management
Office of Grants Management and Scientific Review
Office of Rare Diseases Research: Oversees the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network and Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center (GARD)^[8]
Office of Strategic Alliances: Works with businesses in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry to speed the development of new drugs^[8]

Programs and initiatives

Overview

The stated goal of NCATS is to promote research in both existing and new areas of medicine and science, in order to promote public health and to overcome high failure rates in clinical trials.^[9]^[10] To accomplish this, NCATS supports 31 programs and initiatives that relate to translational research and improving the speed of therapeutic development.^[11] The 31 programs and initiatives involve a range of STEM-related fields including biology, biochemistry, chemistry, bioengineering, virology, genetics, and data science.^[12] Within the realm of translational science, issues that NCATS is particularly focused on addressing using its programs, initiatives, and partnerships include increasing the success and de-risking the costs associated with therapeutic development, incentivizing more collaborative work, and addressing data transparency issues.^[13]

COVID response

During the COVID-19 pandemic, NCATS launched an open data initiative to promote collaborative sharing of COVID-related drug data.^[14] An additional data sharing partnership with several other government institutes resulted in a study detailing the COVID-related risks for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.^[15]^[16]