Summary, originally published by University College London
Four leading children’s research institutions on three continents are joining forces to decipher pediatric illnesses, including rare diseases, and find better treatments.
The four pediatric hospitals — Boston Children’s Hospital; UCL Great Ormond Street Institute for Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital (London); the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute with The Royal Children’s Hospital (Melbourne); and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto — are working together to evaluate genomic data, clinical data from patients, and scientific and medical expertise to accelerate discovery and therapeutic development.
The partnership, known as the International Precision Child Health Partnership (IPCHiP), is the first major global collaboration around genomics and child health. The founding partners anticipate that additional institutions will join the collaboration in the future.
IPCHiP’s first project will involve epilepsy in infants, bringing together efforts already underway at the four hospitals.
Investigators at each site will enroll babies under age one with epilepsy, sequence their genomes, change treatment based on the findings when appropriate, and follow the children’s development long term. No patient will be identifiable from the data used, and no patient data will be shared across international borders.