From Bench to Bedside and into the Community

Walter K. Kraft, MD, was recently named interim director of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College (SKMC) Clinical and Translational Sciences Center (CTSC). Established in October 2025 at Thomas Jefferson University, the CTSC is designed to accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into life-changing treatments and healthcare innovations.

As interim director, Dr. Kraft aims to create a pathway to move research discoveries to patients more quickly, while also strengthening engagement with patient communities.  As a professor in the Department of Pharmacology, Physiology & Cancer Biology, Dr. Kraft brings decades of experience in clinical pharmacology and translational research to the role.

Read on to learn about Dr. Kraft’s research and what he hopes to achieve in his new role:

I work in the discipline of clinical pharmacology. This field focuses on investigating new drugs as they move from the lab into people, or the best ways to use existing medications. For example, we look to understand how drug doses vary among people, or how drugs may interact with each other, or how to adjust doses for patients with kidney or liver disease.

I have spent a lot of time looking at the best ways to treat infants who have had exposure to opioids before birth. This has involved examining the use of buprenorphine, a drug first developed to treat adults with opioid use disorder. We have looked at all parts of how this drug can be best used by clinicians in the newborn unit. For example, I recently worked with a trainee in our program who developed new and safer formulations of the drug.  At the moment, I am on the steering committee of the HEAL Evaluation of Limited Pharmacotherapies for Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome (HELP for NOWS) National Institutes of Health (NIH) consortium. We just reported in JAMA our practice-changing results on the best ways to give the drugs to reduce withdrawal symptoms. Our ongoing trial will identify the best drug to use.

Our goals are to reduce the withdrawal symptoms from opioids that occur once the umbilical cord is cut in a newborn. If we can reduce the amount of medication needed to treat this condition, or prevent the need altogether, we can get babies home faster so they can do what newborns should be doing — bonding with mom at home and growing each day. 

The goal of the CTSC is to facilitate translational research across the Jefferson enterprise. What is translational research? It is making discoveries and moving them closer to the patient. There can often be points of friction in taking new knowledge and applying it to clinical care — bottlenecks from the bench to early studies in people, or from early studies to larger clinical trials, or to implement the findings of research in clinical care. The CTSC will help facilitate these transitions and new discoveries. For example, we hope to build platforms that allow easier access to the large patient data in our system. This could allow bench researchers to identify exciting new drug targets, identify patterns that one can only see in large patient data, identify patients who could benefit from participating in the clinical trial, or implement new research findings in the community. Some of these pieces already exist at Jefferson. The CTSC is designed to coordinate these as Jefferson Health has grown in size, scope and geographic distribution. 

A short-term goal is to establish the infrastructure of the center, and an overarching goal is to think how we can best leverage the size and scope of Jefferson. We need to organize our data in a way that serves all our missions. Key organizational goals will be to establish support units or what are called “cores” upon which we can build. Some we are considering are in the areas of biostatistics and study design, informatics, community engagement and training. We are reaching out to funded translational research centers at peer institutions to identify best practices and thinking about the ways in which philanthropic efforts can kick-start our efforts. At the same time, we are thinking about strategic planning for how the CTSC will look in the medium and long term. 

A few years from now, success means the center has become the infrastructure that makes research easier and more impactful across Jefferson — more clinical trials, more competitive grants, more trainees developing as investigators, and more patients accessing promising treatments here, in the communities where they receive care. It means discoveries made in our labs are reaching the clinic faster, and that the science we produce is not only growing in volume but in quality and reach. If we build this well, I believe Jefferson will be positioned to earn a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the NIH — a recognition that would validate what we've built and bring the resources to take it even further. 

I've spent my career doing the work this center is designed to support — taking research from an initial idea all the way through to changing how medical care is delivered. That experience gives me an understanding of where researchers get stuck, what they need to succeed and how the right infrastructure can remove those barriers rather than create new ones. Running a research compliance office since 2015 has deepened that understanding. It has taught me that the structures we build around research are not bureaucratic obstacles — they are the foundation of trust, with our patients, with our sponsors and with society. I take that responsibility seriously. And maintaining my clinical practice in vascular medicine keeps me grounded in the work itself — connected to faculty across the institution and to the patient care mission that gives all of this its purpose. That combination of experience — as a researcher, an administrator and a practicing clinician — is what I bring to this role.

During my training, I was amazed at how a pill or infusion could make a sick person better. It seemed like sorcery to me, but I realized it was magic that could be understood. I wanted to take part in this process and to change the way medicine is practiced, if only in a small way. This is what led me to clinical pharmacology. In terms of neonatal opioid withdrawal, Jefferson has a long history of leadership in this area. I became involved in 2004 with a group of clinicians here working to improve the care of the infants. 

It had to be when the statistician provided me with the results of our phase 3 trial, demonstrating that buprenorphine was associated with shorter hospital stays compared to infants treated with the standard of care morphine. We had worked on this study for years – from the phase 1 studies, writing the grants, preparing clinical staff, enrolling patients and collecting data. This was a double-blind design, so none of us on the research team knew how it would go. It was satisfying to see all this work and effort come to the finding we were hoping for, that we had identified a new, better way to treat infants with exposure to opioids before birth. 

Early on, there was a lot of judgment about pregnant women with opioid use disorder. In some locations, women were even charged with crimes. I found Jefferson understood that these women care about the well-being of their children and they are willing partners in our attempts to identify the best treatments. 

Scott Waldman, MD, PhD, Chair of Pharmacology, Physiology and Cancer Biology, was program director when I was a fellow in Clinical Pharmacology here at Jefferson and has been a key mentor ever since. He has a first-rate scientific mind and has been extremely generous with his time as I developed my research program. He is a model in leadership and mentoring the next generation of scientists. For years, when I have not been quite sure what my next step should be, I relied on sage advice from Dr. Waldman. 

I always say if you need a favor from me, ask about my daily bike commute. Let me talk for about 10 minutes and then get to your ask. Kidding aside, I love my 10-mile ride from South Jersey to Center City. It is a way to feel the elements, clear the head and stay healthy. I also love live music, typically in small-sized venues around town. There is a tremendous amount of talent out there, and there is something transcendent about the interaction between the artists and audience.