Challenges and Opportunities for Commercializing Technologies in the Pulmonary Arena: An Official American Thoracic Society Report.

"Translational Medicine" has been a buzzword for over two decades. The concept was intended to be lofty, to reflect a new "bench-to-bedside" approach to basic and clinical research that would bridge fields, close gaps, accelerate innovation, and shorten the time and effort it takes to bring novel technologies from basic discovery to clinical application. Has this approach been successful and lived up to its promise? Despite incredible scientific advances and innovations developed within academia, successful clinical translation into real-world solutions has been difficult. This has been particularly challenging within the pulmonary field, as there have been fewer FDA-approved drugs and higher failure rates for pulmonary therapies as compared to other common disease areas. The American Thoracic Society (ATS) convened a workshop with the goal of identifying major challenges related to the commercialization of technologies within the pulmonary space, and opportunities to enhance this process. A survey was developed and administered to 164 participants within the pulmonary arena. This workshop report provides a summary of these survey results. Importantly, this report identifies a number of poorly recognized challenges that exist in pulmonary academic settings, which likely contribute to diminished efficiency of commercialization efforts, ultimately hindering the rate of successful clinical translation. Since many innovations are initially developed in academic settings, this is a global public health issue that impacts the entire ATS community. This report also summarizes key resources/opportunities and provides recommendations to enhance successful commercialization of pulmonary technologies.