Paediatric drug optimization for cancer medicines: meeting report, January 2024

The development of medicines for children lags unacceptably behind that for adults by nearly a decade. Following the resolution at the 69th World Health Assembly on promoting innovation and access to quality, safe, efficacious, and affordable medicines for children, the WHO and its partners have increased their efforts to deliver on this global commitment and have scaled up activities to ensure that age-appropriate formulations are available for children.

WHO launched on January 18th, 2024 the first The PADO–cancer exercise enables alignment between funders, procurers, market-coordination entities, researchers, innovators, generics manufacturers, product development partnerships, and regulators on priority products to be investigated and developed, as well as increasing efforts to tackle challenges in access to cancer medicines in LMICs.