The Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla was awarded $20 million over a five-year period on Thursday by the National Institutes of Health, thus becoming the fourth research institute in the state to receive the prestigious award, also known as the Clinical and Translational Science Award.

Federal officials created the grant in 2006 to reduce the time it takes research findings to become actual treatments for patients.

The Scripps Translational Science Institute, a collaborative effort with The Scripps Research Institute and Scripps Health, will use the money to fund research that leads to new therapies for treating disease. Also, the institute will hire five or six ancillary clinical researchers, will assure advanced training for young researchers and will collaborate with scientists worldwide to find new therapies for diabetes and obesity.

The money could help the institute attract more funding from government and private sources, Joe Panetta, president and CEO of BioCom, the biotechnology industry's trade group in Southern California.

Other institutions awarded with a fund from the NIH included Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York City; Boston University; the Stanford University School of Medicine; Harvard University; Indiana University School of Medicine; Northwestern University; Ohio University; Tufts University; the University of Alabama at Birmingham; the University of Colorado, Denver; the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the University of Utah.

Altogether, 14 academic centers in 11 states received a total of $533 million over five years.