Publications have previously shown that only 30% of marketed drugs in Europe and worldwide include a paediatric authorisation and less than 50% of authorised medicines commonly used in children had been properly tested in this population. This rate drops 10% in the vulnerable patient population in neonatal intensive care units. Even if the situation may improve with the different paediatric legislation in place, there is still a major societal challenge to be addressed.
There are many scientific and operational challenges faced by both pharma companies and academia when running paediatric clinical trials. Given the paucity of patients available for study in many paediatric indications and the need for multiple capable sites to satisfy enrolment in trials, the clinical trial infrastructure across the EU is not sufficiently organised, and lacks adequate funds and scale to consistently and efficiently deliver both industry-sponsored and academic non-industry sponsored clinical trials leading to new drug approval, complete labelling of existing drugs, valid comparisons between existing marketed therapies, or observational studies informing the natural history of disease indications.
A broad multidisciplinary public-private consortium is required to meet the challenges and be transformative for collectively addressing children’s needs for better medicines.
The overall vision of this topic is to create a large collaborative paediatric network that facilitates the development and availability of new drugs and other therapies, and the expansion of knowledge about drugs currently in practice for the entire paediatric population.
To achieve this vision the objectives are to:
This project will have an impact on a number of areas including