Translational medicine

What is translational medicine?

Translational medicine integrates scientific understanding of biomarkers, pre-clinical, clinical and molecular data into R&D decision-making, ensuring a flow of information from clinical programs to the laboratory and back. Insights gained from translational medicine influence how medicines are discovered and developed, and also provide important information for healthcare professionals to consider when diagnosing and treating various diseases. 

At Bristol Myers Squibb, hundreds of world-class researchers make up the Translational Medicine team, spanning all therapeutic areas of focus from early discovery to commercialization. Leveraging genomics, proteomics, imaging, and bioinformatics, these researchers bring forward new learnings and solutions in efforts to revolutionize treatment strategies for some of the most challenging diseases.

Employing translational research to accelerate care

Biomarkers are used to understand the pharmacodynamics of medicines, their mechanism of action in the human body and how human biology may work to thwart a medicine’s effectiveness. By understanding the unique factors that cause some people to respond better to one treatment over another, we can focus drug discovery and development in ways that are personalized and highly effective.

Industry-leading clinical and biomarker datasets across the drug discovery and development continuum are analyzed by our scientists with assistance of machine learning and AI. We use this knowledge to improve and accelerate research methods and identify and validate novel targets, increasing the probability of success and fueling the next generation of medicines. This collective understanding helps inform our precision R&D approach, as we work to identify the appropriate therapeutic mechanism for each patient based on individual characteristics.