Translational Medicine as the answer to an “urgency”?!

My research project focuses on the material and discursive practices of Translational Medicine. In doing so I assume that Translational Medicine responds to a state of emergency in a Foucauldian sense. More precisely, I argue that there have been diffusion attempts between medical research and practice. Nevertheless, both areas remain difficult to unite. Mainly in the policy discourse, the gap between laboratory and clinical practice is negotiated as an urgency. This gap is framed as a systematic problem of the German research system. Here Translational Medicine positions itself at the same time as the answer to this urgency. Translational Medicine offers a new organizational configuration as a solution. Here, processes of institutionalisation and professionalisation of Translational Medicine can be observed.