By Dr. Stephen M. Ostroff

If you’ve been following my blog series about the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS), you know about a critical component of nearly all FDA efforts to promote innovative approaches to developing and evaluating our regulated products – collaboration! This week FDA made two new additions to its network of academic partnerships known as Centers of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSIs).

The first partner brings together a team of leading scientists at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) in a joint effort with Stanford University. The second, Johns Hopkins University, builds on a long history of collaboration with FDA. Both partners received FDA funding through a competitive application process to establish CERSIs that will promote cross-disciplinary regulatory science training, scientific exchanges, and leading-edge research focused on FDA science priority areas.

This latest expansion of our CERSI network is an exciting development. The specialized, cutting-edge science required for FDA’s increasingly complex mission makes it imperative that we leverage available knowledge and infrastructure from collaborative partners in academia. These partnerships enrich the breadth and depth of FDA expertise, enabling us to base our regulatory decisions on the most current scientific evidence. They also enable FDA to bring its expansive experience to academia, ensuring that the new scientific approaches being developed at these institutions can be applied in a way that increases their usefulness for evaluating FDA-regulated products. And most important of all, patients and consumers will ultimately benefit from the investment.

Like those FDA previously established at the University of Maryland and Georgetown University, CERSIs are part of FDA’s effort to promote a vibrant, collaborative, regulatory science culture that enables us to tackle the scientific challenges presented by breakthroughs in medical product development and to improve food safety and quality.

As with the others, the joint UCSF-Stanford and the Johns Hopkins CERSIs will be managed by OCS’s Office of Regulatory Science and Innovation, together with teams of scientists from across FDA. Each new CERSI brings specific goals and unique strengths to enhancing FDA’s regulatory research and review.

The UCSF-Stanford CERSI will bring West Coast representation to the CERSI network and enable FDA to access UCSF’s powerhouse in quantitative sciences and pharmacology. Pre-eminent teams of scientists from both institutions and FDA scientists will be working together to develop and offer courses and workshops in drug development and regulatory science through UCSF’s American Course in Drug Development and Regulatory Sciences (ACDRS).

This CERSI will also offer scientific exchanges and training that target three of FDA’s regulatory science priority areas: transforming toxicology to improve product safety, improving clinical studies and evaluation, and harnessing diverse data through information sciences to improve health outcomes. In addition to FDA funding, the UCSF-Stanford CERSI is leveraging funds from the two academic institutions, through courses like the ACDRS, and from a recent Burroughs Wellcome Foundation Award in Innovation in Regulatory Sciences.

The Johns Hopkins CERSI will focus on three core FDA strategic priorities: clinical evaluations, social and behavioral science, and food safety. The university’s internationally recognized faculty in these areas and its geographic proximity to FDA will facilitate intellectual exchange among university faculty, FDA staff, and scientists. FDA staff can take advantage of workshops, symposia, courses, certificate programs, and a Master’s degree in Regulatory Science as well as others areas close to FDA’s strategic goals. Johns Hopkins is also known as a leader in innovative approaches to educational and life-long learning, including Internet-based courses that will be available to FDA scientists and staff worldwide.

Collaborating with our academic partners is crucial to our ability to expand the scientific foundation and infrastructure FDA needs to deliver on the promises of using 21st century science and technology to fulfill our regulatory mission.

Stephen M. Ostroff, M.D., is FDA’s Acting Chief Scientist