Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
It's up to stakeholders at every stage of therapeutic development—industry and academic researchers, policymakers, patient foundations and even patients themselves—to embrace the power of collaboration. Only then will we enable translational research and push much-needed treatments to the clinic faster.
India has become a hotbed of clinical trials, but recent reports of safety lapses have prompted calls for better regulation in this area. Currently, trial requirements can be relaxed if doing so is in the 'public interest', but a clearer definition of what this means is needed before this provision should be used.
In December 2011, Stephen O'Brien stepped down as head of the US National Cancer Institute's Laboratory of Genomic Diversity and took up a three-year, $5 million 'megagrant' in Russia through a program started a year earlier by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science. O'Brien used his money to help launch the Theodosius Dobzhansky Center for Genome Bioinformatics at Saint Petersburg State University. On a trip back to the US, O'Brien spoke with Elie Dolgin about his new Russian center.