Translational Science Benefits
Clinical & medical benefits (Tools & products)
Definition
Biological substances used to indicate, diagnose, prevent, or treat diseases or medical conditions. Examples include vaccines, blood or blood components, gene therapy, tissues, and protein therapies such as antibodies.
Rationale
By its definition, biological factors and products play important roles in each of the translational stages. Biological products are especially critical to advance research for a variety of health conditions for which no treatment is currently available.
Guidance
Advice from authors on searching for information:
The use of biological factors and products may change as biological substances or related procedures are newly identified or modified. Consider staying abreast of the best practices as best as possible.
Resources & Data
Organizations, repositories, websites, and other sources where you can find more information:
Local
- Environmental Health and Safety at Washington University in St. Louis. List of biological toxins that are regulated as Select Agents.
General
- Biological Databases for Human Research. Research article by Zou D, Ma L, Yu J,J and Zhang Z, 2015, compiling and describing human-related biological databases.
- PubMed/MEDLINE. PubMed provides free access to MEDLINE, the NLM database of indexed citations and abstracts to medical, nursing, dental, veterinary, health care, and preclinical sciences journal articles. See PubMed Help for guidance.
- U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA). A list of licensed biological products for which they have supporting documents.
Data Limitations
Challenges you may encounter while searching for information:
Due to the personal nature of biological data, some of the data may be available if de-identified, or otherwise unavailable.
Publications
Articles, books, and other publications in translational science using the indicator:
- Cava C, Bertoli G, Castiglioni I. Integrating genetics and epigenetics in breast cancer: biological insights, experimental, computational methods and therapeutic potential. BMC Systems Biology. 2015;9:62. doi: 10.1186/s12918-015-0211-x.
- Dooling KL, Guo A, Patel M, et al. Recommendations of the advisory committee on immunization practices for use of Herpes Zoster vaccines. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2018 Jan 26;67(3):103-108. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6703a5.
- Hong HN, Shim JH, Won YJ, et al. Therapeutic time window for the effects of erythropoietin on astrogliosis and neurite outgrowth in an in vitro model of spinal cord injury. Medicine (Baltimore). 2018 Mar;97(9):e9913. doi: 10.1097/MD.0000000000009913.
- Sun K, Gonçalves JP, Larminie C, et al. Predicting disease associations via biological network analysis. BMC Bioinformatics. 2014;15(1):304. doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-15-304.