The two ends of life can be viewed separately, but they have many common elements like frailty or vulnerability, and these shared aspects mean that geriatric and pediatric drug development should be viewed together, according to the European Forum for GCP (EFGCP).
This philosophy has inspired the Children’s Medicines and Geriatric Medicines Working Parties of the EFGCP to organize a joint meeting, called “Multi-Stakeholder Workshop on Facilitating Medicines Development for Youth and the ‘Young at Heart’: Learning for Intergenerational Strategies,” to be held in London on 21 November.
“The development of drugs is evolving and much effort is being put into understanding in special populations like children and older people,” noted a statement from the organizers. “The agenda reflects important topics like the special ethical considerations that can affect the informed consent process, evaluation of the safety parameters which is dependent of the adequate reporting of adverse events, and interpretation of the adverse drug reactions and proper use of modelling of simulation to bring value to the drug development process.”
The objective is to share challenges, to detect possible synergies, and to learn from each other to improve and facilitate high quality ethical clinical research and drug development for these populations across Europe, they added.
For more details about the event, click here.
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