Funding
The financial backbone supporting the Belgian Pediatric Clinical Research Network (BPCRN) has evolved over the years, adapting to the dynamic requirements of the domain.
Initially supported by an educational grant from Pharma Belgium, BPCRN faced sustainability challenges due to a lack of diversified funding sources. On the other hand, the SAFEPEDRUG consortium managed to harness alternative strategies in pediatric medicine development, securing substantial support from IWT/SBO-130033.
However, a significant shift in the funding landscape came with the entry of the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 (IMI2) funding. IMI2 emerged as a transformative financial force, focusing on collaborative research projects and pooling resources from both the public and private sectors, and was consolidated within the conect4children (c4c) consortium including 20 other national pediatric research networks. BPCRN was among the beneficiaries of IMI2, with the initiative providing the much-needed incentive for research expansion and infrastructure enhancement.
The BPCRN evolved into consolidating and expanding into more than 15 connected university and regional hospital sites with pediatric experts and has facilitated over 20 trials.