Reflections on Success in Multidisciplinary, Translational Science: Working Together to Answer the Right Questions

Team science is becoming a norm in modern cancer research. The National Cancer Institute encourages multidisciplinary team science through Cancer Center Support Grants, SPOREs, and other funding opportunities. As an epidemiologist who conducts team science, I am often asked what are the attributes of our multidisciplinary, translationally focused prostate cancer research team and what is it about our research environment that has led to our shared success. After being asked these questions so many times, I began to realize that not all team science proceeds as smoothly as ours. Thus, over the past several years, I have reflected on the explanations for our team's success.

In this editorial, I share the factors that contributed to our team science success, including attributes of the team members, incentives to be a team member, institutional factors that support team science, and institutional and national infrastructure for team science. I point to some of the complexities that our team has experienced while conducting multidisciplinary, translational research. I highlight the need for the team to focus on the most important questions together as not to lose focus and to have the greatest impact. Finally, I mention the need to expand included disciplines to continue to move team science forward to solve cancer problems.

Factors That Have Contributed to Our Team's Success

Complexities of Multidisciplinary, Translational Team Science

• Time and resources needed to build critical mass

  It takes time, energy, money, opportunities for unforced exchange of ideas, and demonstration of success and mutual benefit, among other factors to build an effective team.

• Many cooks in the kitchen

  Despite being a team effort, one team member has to take responsibility to see a project through to its optimal endpoint. Otherwise, partially completed projects, even very important ones, languish.

• So many great ideas generated, so little time to pursue them

  So many great ideas are generated when researchers from multiple disciplines work together, but there is not enough time to pursue them all. Prioritization of research ideas is absolutely necessary to continue to have success together.

• Reviewers not yet prepared to review multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary studies

  This is perhaps the biggest barrier at the moment. Until we train a sufficient cadre of full-fledged multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary researchers, we need to recruit big thinkers as grant application and article reviewers.

• Financial systems not yet prepared

  Working across disciplines usually involves multiple divisions of an institution each with its own culture of financial management and own financial software. This is not a huge barrier, but additional time must be allotted for budgeting and management.

Team Science Is a Powerful Approach, but the Team Still Needs to Focus on Addressing the Right—That Is, Important and Impactful—Research Questions Together

• Obligation to address, together, questions that will generate knowledge that is actionable

  Again, when many investigators from many disciplines work together, so many ideas can emerge. Teams can become distracted. To avoid this pitfall, teams must focus on thinking big. Especially at this time of limited resources and funding, teams have the imperative to ask and prioritize research questions that aim to make a difference for populations at risk of cancer, newly diagnosed patients, and cancer survivors. Advances will result from the richness of the multidisciplinary perspectives of the team.

• Still need to conduct etiologic cancer research, though

  Foundational research is still very necessary to move biomedical science. But, in conducting etiologic research, the team must avoid “me too science.”

Moving Team Science Forward

• Expand disciplines included in our multidisciplinary, translational research teams

  We need to learn how to collaborate with engineers and physical scientists to improve measurement, and information management and analysis. We also need to learn how to collaborate with interventionists to test the benefits of translational discoveries generated by team science, and then to implement and evaluate them. Learning how to collaborate will certainly involve learning each other's discipline's language and how to communicate ideas.

In summary, there is great value in working together across disciplines for individual researchers, for the team of researchers, for science, and importantly for populations and patients. Team science can be exciting to conduct because of the energy synergy. Team science has complexities, but these are not roadblocks to success.

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Disclaimer

The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Cancer Institute or the NIH.

Grant Support

Dr. Platz is supported by Department of Defense grants W81XWH-12-1-0170 and W81XWH-12-1-0545, and by National Cancer Institute grants P30 CA006973, P50 CA58236, and U01 CA164975.