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Research in practice
Research in practice: fitting it together
  1. John R Apps1,2,3
  1. 1 Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
  2. 2 Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham, UK
  3. 3 UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, United Kingdom
  1. Correspondence to Dr John R Apps, Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK; j.apps{at}ucl.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2019-318689

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    Over the last few years, the Research in Practice section of Archives of Disease in Childhood, Education & Practice has published papers covering a range of methods from basic science to clinical trials as well as initiatives developed to improve implementation and education of research skills. This article attempts to show how such diverse approaches fit together to work to improve patient care. Figure 1 provides a visual representation of how the different aspects, types and components of research work together. In the following sections, we explore how advances in different areas are transforming our understanding of disease and how we look after and treat patients.

    Figure 1

    Visual representation of translational medical research. In green boxes are different stages and types of research from the original question/challenge to change in practice. In blue are highlighted advances and in yellow the infrastructure facilitating improved research for children.

    Understanding disease pathogenesis

    The last two decades have seen an explosion in technologies and methodologies, enabling us to further understand the pathophysiology of disease. Most notably, the development of ‘omic’ technologies has enabled high throughput analysis of the genetic, transcriptomic, proteomic and microbiomic landscape of patients and their diseases (see, eg, What is next generation sequencing?1–4). We will see below how this is impacting on diagnostics and treatments for patients. These technologies, at the most, provide a profile of a given disease or state; however, it is through functional evaluation in model systems, such as cell culture and animal models that we begin to further understand their functional significance. The …

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