Drug Research Gets Boost for Children

15:09
Drug Research Gets Boost for Children -

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, which supports research on HIV infection in children, expands its scope considerably. At a Los Angeles press conference today, Paul Glaser, president of the board of the foundation, announced the creation of the Glaser Pediatric Research Network, which hopes to accelerate the testing and development of drugs to treat children with a variety of other serious diseases, including. cancer, asthma and psychiatric diseases

new network address "a problem that has existed for many years," said Philip Pizzo, pediatrics chief at the hospital affiliated with Harvard Boston children: Up to 80% of medicines used on children and infants has not been specifically tested on young people, and there is little information on side effects, appropriate doses or formulations suitable for children . Treating children is not just a matter of smaller doses, says pediatrician Harvey Cohen of the Packard children's Hospital at Stanford, in California, for example, a drug against leukemia that was safe for adults has been found to endanger the heart the development of a child.

Until modernization Act, the Food and drug Administration took effect this year, there was no need drugs to be tested on children, said Pizzo. Now the law requires limited trials to establish the safety, dose, and tolerance. The network, whose research priorities will be determined by a scientific advisory group not yet unnamed, will facilitate and coordinate these tests. It includes institutions of Pizzo and Cohen and the affiliated children's hospitals at the University of California, Los Angeles; Baylor College of Medicine, Houston; and the University of California, San Francisco. The Glaser Foundation is priming the pump with $ 8 million for the first 2 years -. $ 5 million for clinical studies, the rest for clinical fellowships and health policy for the defense of children's rights

The Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation was founded in 1988 by Elizabeth Glaser - the wife of actor Paul Glaser - who, having contracted AIDS during a blood transfusion, unknowingly passed the virus to his two small children. Before his death in 1994, Elizabeth Glaser was already thinking about how to expand the scope of the effort. Since its inception, the foundation has raised over $ 85 million.

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