Abstract:    Translational medicine is committed to promoting the two-way translation between basic research and clinical application, promoting the overall development of medicine and improving people′s health level. It has occupied an important position in medical research in the world. But the development of translational medicine in China is still in the exploratory stage, and how to establish the research organization modes suitable for translational medicine is still an urgent question to be solved, and successful practices of other countries would be worth learning. This paper focuses on the German research organization modes of translational medicine through literature analysis and case study. 
   This paper defines translational medicine concept and its role in medical innovation chain. Translational medicine acts as an umbrella bringing together basic and clinical research and encompasses numerous disciplines such as preclinical and clinical trial studies and is the bridge to fill up gaps between different stages of medical innovation chain. Around the world, some new institutions have been established as new modes to promote the development of translational medicine, such as National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of USA, National Institute for Health Research of UK, and German Centres for Health Research. As there have been quite a lot of studies about practices of USA and UK, Germany has not got much attention. 
   This paper takes German Centres for Health Research and Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) as examples, which are representatives of alliance mode and entity organization mode. The characteristics and advantages of the two modes are discussed in-depth from four aspects, which are organization management structure, research activities pattern, funding pattern and evaluation mode. It could be found that German Centres for Health Research′s power and responsibility are relatively dispersed in the management structure and a "working group & working site" hierarchical structure is adopted to organize its R&D activities. Besides, both stability and flexibility are taken into account in the process of budget allocation and they have set up an assessment index comprised by short-term indicators and medium and long-term indicators. As an entity organization established by Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) and Charité - Universit tsmedizin Berlin, BIH′s management power and responsibility are concentrated compared to German Centres for Health Research. Its R&D activities are organized across departments, and it has three kinds of fund resources, which support research areas adjusted by talents recruited. For the evaluation, BIH has designed a set of indicators covering the whole chain of translational medicine.
    Based on the comparison of the two modes of translational medicine organization in Germany, it shows that although the two modes have different characteristics, they also have some commonalities: the internal governance structure is complete and effective; research and development activities are organized following the principle of facilitating the cooperation between different personnel and different translation stages; government takes the role of main funder with the supplementary of private funds; fund is invested in not only kinds of R&D projects, but also infrastructure construction and talents development; evaluation index system has been established that reflects the characteristics of translational medicine.
   Finally, combined with our national conditions, this paper puts forward some feasible suggestions to support the construction of translational medicine institutions in China, which include to construct translation institutions by category with a national overall planning; encourage those institutions to apply new management structure; accelerate the cooperation between basic science researchers and clinicians, clinical scientists; enhance the supplement of infrastructure of translational medicine; adopt a mixed funding mechanism that combines stable support and competitive support; and establish a new evaluation system oriented to translational research and talents.

Key words:  translational medicine, research organization mode, Germany