Cardiovascular medicine at the University of Minnesota: lost and then found in translation.

Translational research requires basic innovation and development, an infrastructure for deployment to the experimental clinical arena and a distribution system to connect patients to innovation. The University of Minnesota cardiovascular program led the way in translational medicine after World War II. Subsequently, it briefly lost its way. Learning from the lessons of the past, cardiovascular medicine at Minnesota is being reborn as a twenty-first century organization developing medical innovation from ideas and translating the product to patients in a complex healthcare system.