About European Paediatric Translational Research Infrastructure (EPTRI)
The European Paediatric Translational Research Infrastructure (EPTRI) is a new infrastructure proposed to accelerate and expand the paediatric drug discovery and development processes by focusing on basic and preclinical research methods. A high interest of EPTRI is tailored on rare diseases (RDs) as they affect mainly children and genetic RDs start early in the prenatal/childhood life with a high frequent use of medicines not specifically tested (off-label, unlicensed). EPTRI can make the difference in closing the gap between innovative technologies and paediatric drug development processes and will work to accelerate the paediatric drug development processes from medicines discovery, biomarkers identification and preclinical research to developmental pharmacology, age tailored formulations and medical devices. This will allow to facilitate the translation of the acquired new knowledge and scientific innovation into paediatric clinical studies phases and medical use. EPTRI has just finished the design phase, that has been funded by the European Commission under the INFRADEV-01-2017 call and has submitted the application for inclusion in the ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) Roadmap 2021, supported by 16 EU and non-EU and 109 Research Institutions from 25 countries which have signed the EPTRI Memorandum of Understanding. EPTRI recently participated in the consultation for the revision of the orphan and paediatric European regulations to promote the inclusion of the themes related to paediatric research and orphan medicines in the EU Agenda. Raising awareness in the field of rare diseases and trying to overcome the lack of children medicines are the main goals that EPTRI does really want to achieve, that’s why EPTRI is glad to support the“Rare Diseases Day” initiative, promoting this event and its goals among EPTRI partners, supporters and stakeholders, spreading the initiative on its website and social channels. Finally, EPTRI developed a toolkit to educate children, young patients and families on basic and translational paediatric research, that was designed in collaboration with the young members of the YPAGs, who also reviewed the script of the video and that is freely available on the EPTRI website at this link: https://eptri.eu/basicresearch/