[Translational dental medicine].

Over the last decade, as tremendous innovations have been achieved in scientific technology, translational medicine has come into the focus of academic medicine, and significant intellectual and financial efforts have been made to initiate a multitude of bench-to-bedside projects. The concept of translational medicine is described as the transfer of new understandings of disease mechanisms gained in the laboratory into the development of new methods for diagnosis, therapy, and prevention and their first testing in humans, meanwhile, translational medicine also is described as a patient-oriented population research and the translation of results from clinical studies into everyday clinical practice and health decision making. Translational medicine is a hot spot in recent academic field, and it is crucial for improving the living standard of population and renewing the research idea and technology. It has, however, significant obstacles during the approach of translational medicine. We here review the background, concept, current situation of translational dental medicine, key components and obstacles of translational medicine.