Creativity, innovation, and discovery
Exceptional research fuels every successive generation humanistic medical care.
This past summer, Brown President Christina H. Paxson announced that the University is making ambitious plans to increase investment in research across the institution in the coming decade. One major driver of that increase will be translational research at the Medical School.
Indeed, Dean Mukesh Jain sees Brown’s bold aim as perfectly aligned with the Medical School’s reputation for training deeply human and compassionate doctors. “The translational research that we pursue will help us find treatments and cures that can help us heal not just the individual patients we see as doctors, but also many more around the world,” he says. “These efforts will help us pursue our mission at the largest scale.”
While research has been part of the School’s work since the beginning—the Biomedical Research Laboratory was six years old when the Medical School was founded—it has significantly accelerated its research program over the past decade. Under the guidance of former Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences Jack A. Elias, MD, external research funding more than doubled between 2013 and 2019. The Division of Biology and Medicine accounts for about a third of all research dollars at Brown.
Recent initiatives have included a notable focus on research with clinical applications. For example, a major philanthropic gift is transforming basic and translational cancer research at the Legorreta Cancer Center. Gifts also have helped establish a new Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research aimed to detect and treat Alzheimer’s and related dementias. Newer areas of inquiry are primed for growth, such as a new initiative in RNA biology.
Jain sees Brown as uniquely positioned to make a broad impact with its research and its applications. “We are thrilled by the recent growth and progress we have seen, and are ready to take this work in translational science as far as possible so that we can make progress—with the urgency it deserves—not only to improve the lives of our patients but also to enhance economic and workforce opportunities for our Rhode Island community.”
