The National Institutes of Health has awarded the University a $7.7 million contract to find ways to move cellular research developments toward human clinical research and treatments that could directly help patients, according to an Academic Health Center press release.

Under the contract, the University’s Academic Health Center will collaborate with the Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Cell and Gene Therapy and the University of Pittsburgh’s Cancer Institute.

The project will work to move basic University cellular research to the human clinical trial stage, a process called translational research.

Most of the translational research will be done at the University’s Minnesota Molecular and Cellular Therapeutics Facility on the St. Paul campus.

The University research represented will include the use of adult stem cells, umbilical cord stem cells and tumor vaccines.