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It is hard to imagine a department better suited than pathology for bringing together researchers and clinicians and integrating their approaches to advance our understanding of disease in a way that will benefit patients. Many of us chose to become pathologists, in fact, because we thought that this direction would offer the best opportunity for unraveling basic mechanisms of human disease. Those of us with MD/PhD combined degrees often had particularly strong ambitions to see the fruits of basic science in improved patient care. Yet these lofty goals have proven extraordinarily difficult to achieve.

Why? One major obstacle is the profound cultural divide between medical practice and basic research. The gulf between lab and clinic needs to be addressed at every level: the aims of education, the research fields within the Department, the clinical areas of specialty, and the Department as a whole.

This restructuring towards a translational focus includes an integrative approach that will help future pathologists—our graduate students, fellows, and residents—move easily between the foundations of basic research, translational science, and clinical medicine.

Given our current strengths and the possibilities before us, it seems most reasonable to continue to forge departmental identities around three major groupings on the basic science side: Immunology, Molecular Oncology, and the Program in Experimental Pathology, which will form the nexus of the translational research endeavors in the Department.

For the last three decades, NYU Pathology has already enjoyed a unique position with its largest predoctoral and postdoctoral training grant combining immunology and oncology in the country. Experimental Pathology and the translational pathobiology graduate program associated with it will now bring together our clinicians and basic researchers under one virtual roof in order to facilitate the kinds of interactions and exchanges without which translational research remains either shallow or impractical.

The boundaries between these groups are not entrenched—indeed, a number of faculty members already straddle two programs—but this integrative organization provides a clear focus for our educational and recruitment efforts, along with the other forums for intellectual exchange.

Each of the sections will be associated with a particular graduate program: our ongoing, NIH-funded Program in Molecular Oncology and Immunology will ultimately be split into two separate programs, and we have created a third, new Program in Pathobiology, designed to provide PhD students with a basic knowledge of medical sciences so that they are prepared for careers in biomedical and translational research. This Pathobiology track is associated with the Program of Experimental Pathology. These educational initiatives, along with the increased strength in the basic and translational research activities of the Department, will, in turn, also invigorate the residency training program by attracting more research-oriented residents and fellows.