On 5-6 September 2018 EMA (European Medicines Agency) and ACCELERATE – Innovation for children and adolescents with cancer will organize the third multi-stakeholder Paediatric Strategy Forum, that will be focused on checkpoint inhibitors used in combination therapy, in children and adolescents.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors have shown impressive success in some adult malignancies, in particular, monoclonal antibodies that block the interaction between programmed death ligand 1 (PDL1) on the surface of tumor or antigen-presenting cells, and programmed death 1 (PD-1) on the surface of lymphocytes. Many of these products have now been licensed as first or second line treatments for adult malignancies.

Paediatric Strategy Forums have been created to facilitate dialogue and provide an opportunity for constructive interactions between relevant stakeholders (patients/patient representatives, clinicians, academics, pharmaceutical companies and regulators) on topics requiring open discussion on development of medicines in the best interests of children and adolescents with cancer.

The summary of the first Paediatric Strategy Forum held in January 2017 on ALK inhibition in paediatric malignancies can be found here; the summary of the second Paediatric Strategy Forum held in November 2017 on Medicinal Product Development for Mature B cell Malignancies in Children can be found here.

The goal of the third meeting is to share information, in a pre-competitive setting, to facilitate the developments of innovative medicines and ultimately their introduction into the standard-of-care of children with malignancies

ACCELERATE is a Horizon 2020 project, supporting the long-term sustainability of large scale research infrastructures (RIs) through the development of policies and legal and administrative tools for a more effective management and operation of RIs. The project is coordinated by the Infrastructure CERIC-ERIC, that operates in the fields of materials, biomaterials and nanotechnology.

More information about the event and the programme is available at this link.