SPARK publishes manuscript in Nature Biotechnology
Posted on February 16th, 2024
SPARK has published a paper in the journal Nature Biotechnology describing the unique community and methods the program has developed to address challenges in translating academic discoveries to medical products.
The SPARK at Stanford program has established a process that advances academic discoveries to industry partnerships or investigator-initiated clinical trials and provides training that enhances career opportunities for its graduates. SPARK’s successful translational research program is a learning ecosystem that partners academics with volunteer experts from the biopharmaceutical industry who provide mentoring, instruction and thoughtful feedback. The program emphasizes ‘starting with the end in mind’ based on a team science and design thinking approach.
SPARK has broken into an underutilized space with a successful model to advance and de-risk therapeutic research in academia – by working with industry in a non-hierarchal community. The manuscript, titled ‘SPARKing academic technologies across the valley of death’ in Nature Biotechnology’s Career Feature section, provides more details on SPARK’s goals, methods and metrics.
An accompanying Behind the Paper blog in Springer Nature provides more insight into SPARK’s unique model, and explains the background behind SPARK and what’s next for the program.
Permalink: https://sparkmed.stanford.edu/spark-publishes-manuscript-in-nature-biotechnology/