Five partners will share a five-year, $25 million grant to support research advancing medical science and change health care delivery.
The funds will go to Delaware’s Center for Translational Research (CTR) ACCEL Program, a collaborative of the state’s public research institutions led by the University of Delaware.
ACCEL includes Christiana Care, UD, Nemours/ Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and, as a new member, Delaware State University.
The recent grant award, funded at $20 million from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and $5 million from the state of Delaware, will continue the program through 2023.
ACCEL stands for “accelerating clinical and translational research.”
“Growing clinical and translational research in Delaware harmonizes with our mission and vision, which includes a commitment to be curious, seek new knowledge and anticipate the needs of our neighbors,” said Ken Silverstein, M.D., Christiana Care’s chief clinical officer. “Our research has a laser focus on improving health outcomes, and ACCEL helps us take our results from the bench to both the bedside and the community.”
As part of the renewal, a group of NIH research leaders visited Christiana Care’s Value Institute to learn more about the accomplishments and lessons learned by Christiana Care during ACCEL’s first five years. The NIH leaders also learned what Christiana Care aspires to accomplish during the next five years.
As an example of how ACCEL supports research at Christiana Care, Eric Kmiec, Ph.D., director of the Gene Editing Institute of the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute, spoke about the need to pair genetic research with expertise on behavior and community outreach.
“You can’t understand how to treat a disease without understanding the world outside your lab,” Kmiec said. “I don’t know if we’d have gotten there if it weren’t for the CTR program.”
