The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHSC-H), The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (UT MDACC), and the Memorial Hermann Hospital System wish to renew their Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), which established the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS) in 2006. In the first cycle, the institutions created our CCTS, provided services to 835 investigators in 104 fields, trained KL2 scholars and TL1 trainees, and worked with the greater Houston and Brownsville communities to disseminate health care information and study the unique health issues in Brownsville's Hispanic border population. To further collaborative research in Texas, our CCTS founded the Texas CTSA Consortium and the Lowering the Barriers Program, which has established IRB reciprocity in the University of Texas System. Our CCTS's mission reads: The Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences provides research infrastructure, training and knowledge transfer to expedite the process of translating discovery to practice. We faciliate research and its dissemination for our investigators, our trainees and students, our patients, our local and state population, our Texas CTSA consortium collaborators, and the national CTSA consortium. To this end, we will focus on a thematic structure in the next cycle. Our themes are: 1) Advancing Translational Sciences by Advancing Personalized Therapy (T1 translation) by determing pathophysiology and developing targeted therapeutics and Advancing Community Engagement and dissemination and implementation research (T3/T4 translation); 2) Advancing Clinical Sciences by accelerating and improving new modalities for the design and conduct of clinical research and by accelerating and improving outcomes of research (T2 translation); and 3) Advancing the Clinical and Translational Science Research Workforce (Post-graduate training. Graduate training and research staff training).

RELEVANCE (See instructions): The goal of the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS), funded by a Clinical and Translational Science Award, is to move scientific and medical discoveries as fas as possible from the laboratory to the clinic and community, where they can improve the health of the American people. The CCTS trains researchers, provides research services, and works with its communities to learn their helath concerns and spread health care information.