Clinical Research Forum announces top 10 clinical research achievements awards

The Clinical Research Forum has announced the winners of its third annual Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards. The winning projects represent the outstanding examples of research projects that benefit the health and well-being of the general public.

"Clinical research culminates years of basic and translational science to bring new treatments to patients, and I'm always excited to see the groundbreaking clinical research recognized every year by the Clinical Research Forum," said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. "This is just the tip of the iceberg of the incredible work coming out in the field, much of it funded by the NIH."

The winning researchers represent institutions from across the country, including Cornell University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, the Ohio State University, the University of California-Irvine, the University of California-Los Angeles, the University of Florida, and the University of Pennsylvania. Their projects also address a wide variety of scientific and medical issues, including treatments for lymphoma, homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, hepatitis C, and kidney disease. Other winning projects focused on efforts to prevent ICU infections, find less invasive ways to gauge the success of kidney transplants, locate optimal dosing strategies for anticoagulation control, develop screening protocols for lung cancer, and better understand the relative risk of end-stage kidney disease in patients of different races.

The top prize was awarded to a project that discovered a potential new treatment for pediatric leukemia. That project will receive the Herbert Pardes Clinical Research Excellence Award, named for the executive vice chair of New York-Presbyterian Hospital's Board of Trustees and the hospital's former president and chief executive officer, a physician who is regarded as a champion and visionary in clinical research. All of the projects were published in 2013 in the New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet. The winning researchers will accept their awards and present their research on April 10 at a reception in Washington, DC.

Provided by Clinical Research Forum