18 July – Speakers and presentations

Karel Allegaert, MD, PhD is pediatrician-neonatologist and clinical pharmacologist. He is Professor at KU Leuven and Consultant at Erasmus MC Rotterdam.  His clinical research has focused mainly on perinatal and developmental pharmacology, with a specific interest in perinatal and neonatal clinical pharmacology and the relevant co-variates (maturational, non-maturational, pharmacogenetics, disease-related, pregnancy-related) of pharmacokinetics, and the subsequent use of in vivo datasets to develop prediction models. More recently, his research line has further expanded to in vitro models (placenta, renal tubular cells), in vivo models (bronchopulmonary dysplasia rabbit model) and ng term pharmacovigilance in former preterm neonates.  He has also expertise with DSMB activities, and consultancies to individual companies or authorities, and is involved in several international networks like IMIc4c, the International Neonatal Consortium, and learned societies (ESPR, IUPHAR) or editorial boards of relevant journals to the topic.

Marek Migdał, MD, PhD, has been graduated from the Medical University of Warsaw in 1979. Since October 1, 1979, he is employed at the Children’s Memorial Health Institute. Initially, he worked in the Department of Paediatrics, then from 1986 in the Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care. In December 2018, he was appointed by the Minister of Health to the position of the Director of the CMHI. In 1985-1986 and in 1990 he did research internships in France (SEPCR scholarship, then French government scholarship). In 2005-2009, he was the Head of the PICUt, then, until 2018, the Deputy head of the PICU. He is a paediatrician, specialist in lung diseases. In 1990, he defended his doctoral dissertation at the CMHI in the field of lung function measurement in newborns and infants with respiratory failure. He is a researcher (assistant professor) at the Children’s Memorial Health Institute, author of more than 230 publications, lecturer at postgraduate courses, organizer of a number of conferences dedicated to paediatric intensive care and clinical trials in Poland. Active coordinator of international scientific cooperation. He was the Polish coordinator of the following European grants: EU-CHS – European network for central hypoventilation syndrome (2008-2012), GRIP- Global Research in Paediatrics (2011-2017), in 2016-2018 he was the European coordinator of the SMART grant (Small Medicines Advanced Research Training) and the coordinator of the Polish grants ID-EPTRI (European Translational Research Infrastructure) and c4c (conect4children – a pan-European clinical trial network).

Leanne West is Chief Engineer of Pediatric Technologies at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Pediatric Innovation Catalyst at the Global Center for Medical Innovation where she leads innovation in pediatric medical devices. In her 25+ years working at Georgia Tech, she has led multimillion dollar programs and teams of researchers to develop products for government and industry partners. She also started her own company, Intelligent Access, to take her invention of a wireless personal captioning system to market. She serves as the technical liaison between Georgia Tech and pediatric hospitals around the world, with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Shriners Hospitals being the main partners. Ms. West works closely with clinicians to understand and identify problems that need a solution to allow them to take better care of their patients. She is an invited Judge for many medical device pitch competitions and serves on several Boards in the healthcare and technology arenas. West is the President of the International Children’s Advisory Network (iCAN). Since 2014, iCAN fosters greater global understanding about the importance of the pediatric patient and caregiver voice in healthcare, clinical trials, and research.

Professor Ian Wong is the former Head of Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy, University of Hong Kong. He is also the holder of Lo Shiu Kwan Kan Po Ling Endowed Professorship in Pharmacy.  As an academic pharmacist with research expertise in big data analytics and neuropsychopharmacology. He has led many research programmes in the UK, European and Hong Kong in ADHD. Professor Wong has over 600 publications with publication in prominent journals including Nature portfolio journals, JAMA Network Journals, The Lancet family journals, BMJ journals.  According to Clarivate Analytics’ Essential Science Indicators, Professor Wong has been a top 1% scholar in pharmacology and pharmacy research from 2015 to 2023. In recognition of his research, Professor Wong has received numerous awards for his work as an academic pharmacist. He was awarded the Chemist and Druggist Pharmacy Practice Research Conference Medal from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 2004, an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in the UK in 2011, an Honorary Fellowship from the College of Pharmacy Practice in Hong Kong in 2013, and a Fellowship from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in 2013, a Fellowship from British Pharmacological Society and International Society of Pharmacovigilance in 2020.

Samuele Cortese is currently NIHR Research Professor, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Southampton, and Honorary Consultant for Solent NHS Trust. Prof. Cortese’s main research interests are around neurodevelopmental disorders. He has published more than 350 peer-review papers. He has secured funding as main/co-applicant for more than £ 13 M. In 2022, he was included in the top 1% scientists in the field of psychiatry/psychology (Web of Science). Since 2022, he ranked #1 worldwide in terms of expertise on ADHD (Expertscape).

PharmD, she has a PhD in cellular biochemistry and pharmacology, and a post-graduate degree master in Clinical Research of Medicines. Her main areas of expertise are: ethics and regulatory, informed consent and assent, health data processing for research purposes, European medicine regulatory procedures, R&D for rare and paediatric diseases. She performed non-clinical research in rare diseases, and she was the Secretariat Scientific Assistant of the Ethics Committee in Lecce (IT). Currently, at Fondazione per la Ricerca Farmacologica Gianni Benzi onlus she coordinates the research department and participates in EU and national research projects, where, in most of them, she leads the ethics and regulatory activities. She is a member representing patient’ organisations of Paediatric Committee, European Medicine Agency (EMA). She is/was member of international and national working groups (Ethics Working Group of EnprEMA; Working Group on Rare Cancers of ECPC (European Cancer Patient Coalition); paediatric pharmacology Working Group of the Italian Society of Pharmacology). Author/co-author of peer reviewed publications and abstracts, reviewer for indexed journals and speaker at national and international congresses/meetings in the relevant fields of expertise.

Giovanni Migliaccio is the Scientific Director of the Consorzio per Valutazioni Biologiche e Farmacologiche, (CVBF Pavia, IT) and a Senior Advisor for the European Translational Medicine Research Infrastructure (EATRIS, Amsterdam NL). He obtained a PhD in Biological science in 1977 at the University of Naples (Italy). His interest in science developed around stem cell proliferation and differentiation mechanisms. He spent two years as Post Doc at the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) and 5 years as Associate Scientist at the New York Blood Center (New York, NY). He continued his studies at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) in Rome resulting in more than 150 scientific publications over the years. He is involved in the regulatory aspects of using cultured cells as part of human therapies and acts as an expert for the Italian government in the area of Cell and Gene Therapies. He is also an expert for these products for the European Medicines Agency (EMA). He was also the Chair of the CTP group at the European Department for Quality of Medicines (EDQM) from 2010 to 2018.

Dr Marios Phylactides obtained his BsC in biochemistry from Imperial College, London in 1993. He completed his PhD studies in immunology at University college London in 1998. During his first post-doctoral position at John Radcliff Hospital, Oxford, he worked in the field of cystic fibrosis. After completing an MBA at London Business School, he joined the Molecular Genetics Thalassaemia Department at the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics (CING) in 2005. Dr Phylactides’ research interests include the identification of diagnostic biomarkers for liver fibrosis in β-thalassaemia, investigation of the regulatory mechanisms of γ-globin gene regulation, genotype/phenotype correlation studies for α- and β-thalassaemias and more recently the development of gene therapy vectors for α-thalassaemia. He has been lecturing at the CING Post Graduate School for the last ten years and has overseen the successful completion of the studies of two PhD students and seven MSc students. Dr Phylactides has published 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals, most of them in the field of haemoglobinopathies, with over 1500 citations and an h index of 15.