At the beginning of February, the ALADDIN team were pleased to be a part of the 10th annual ACCELERATE conference, that brought together stakeholders from across the sector to focus on accelerating drug development for children and adolescents with cancer. Across the packed 2-day schedule, the ALADDIN programme was highlighted multiple times – particularly when assessing the need for education on this important topic.
Spotlight on ALADDIN 360 rotations
On the opening day of the conference, in the session titled ‘Lessons learnt from successfully developed anticancer medicines for children and adolescents’, Dr Erica Brivio presented her work as an ALADDIN Rotator at the European Medicines Agency (EMA). During her time there, Erica worked on a project to assess the use of Paediatric Investigation Plans in the approval of new medicines for children with cancer.
Later in the meeting, Dr Laura Fankhauser shared her work from her time at the EMA, which focused on Clinical Trial Assessments under the new Clinical Trial Regulation. Both rotators were acknowledged for the contribution that their work has made to ongoing projects at the EMA, which are aiming to evaluate and improve how new medicines are assessed for children and young people with cancer.
ALADDIN students meet in-person
As part of their enrolment in the ALADDIN training course, all students were invited to this year’s ACCELERATE conference as an opportunity to observe and engage in the multistakeholder discussions. Some of the students were able to come together in person in Brussels, for the first time since starting the program. During this time, they were able to reflect on their experiences as the first ALADDIN cohort, and shared ideas on how they will take what they have learnt in the course forward into their own practises.
Overall the ACCELERATE conference was a great opportunity for the ALADDIN project to be showcased, and we are extremely pleased for all of the students and rotators who were able to present and meet.
