Conect4Children

Conect4Children (c4c) is a large, pan-European network, which aims to facilitate the development of new drugs and other therapies for the entire paediatric population. c4c is a collaboration between industry, health care professionals, academia and patient representatives, who come together to develop the infrastructure and resources needed to support high quality paediatric clinical trials.

In order to test the infrastructure and resources developed within the c4c network, academic and industry proof of viability studies will be conducted. For more information about the studies, please click here.

Based on our experience with the TREAT-NMD network, Newcastle University were invited to become a c4c partner. As well as leading on tasks around the standardisation and harmonisation of data collected within paediatric clinical trials, we are involved in the following aspects of the c4c network:

• Expert advice: Prof. Volker Straub, director of the JWMDRC, was selected as the clinical lead of the neuromuscular c4c expert group. The aim of the expert groups is to provide advice needed to improve child health and paediatric medicine development through an effective network function.
• Training and education: We are supporting the development of short training courses for clinical trial unit staff involved in the development of paediatric medicines. We will be supporting the sponsors of the c4c proof of viability studies to develop trial specific training courses including protocol training and trial specific procedures training.
• Data coordinating centre and data quality standards: As work package leads, we will be looking to identify and promote best practice to enhance the value of data collected in clinical trials and support the reuse of data where possible. The key output of this work will be a cross-cutting paediatric data dictionary for use within the network.
• Communication and dissemination: We are involved in supporting the development of an informative campaign aimed at communicating the benefits of paediatric research to the general public, as well as producing communications to disseminate the work of the c4c network.

For more information about the project, please contact project manager becca.leary@newcastle.ac.uk.

* This project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 777389.

The Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA.

If you would like to know more you can subscribe to the C4C newsletter here.