SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital will coordinate the participation of patients in the biggest European network to conduct paediatric clinical trials

SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital will coordinate the participation of patients in the biggest European network for the conduct of paediatric clinical trials created to date in Europe. The Hospital will carry out this task as part of the conect4children project which is driven by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a public-private consortium supported by the European Union and the pharmaceutical industry, and aims to help create an infrastructure for the conduct of paediatric clinical trials in collaboration with the different agents involved.

Conect4children aims to improve Europe’s competitiveness in the development of medicinal products for children. It benefits from the involvement of 33 academic institutions, 10 pharmaceutical companies and 500 affiliated members from 20 European countries, and is the most ambitious project carried out to date, with a budget of 140 million euros and a 6-year timescale.

The collaborative network for European paediatric clinical trials, conect4children, aims to involve the children throughout the entire trial process and facilitate the work of the researchers when it comes to achieving a sufficient patient sample—especially in the case of clinical trials on rare diseases—with every institution involved coordinated through national networks. It will also encourage  knowledge-sharing to make joint, faster progress in finding new treatments for paediatric diseases.

This project has received funding from the “Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (JU)”, under grant agreement no. 777389. The JU receives support from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the EFPIA.