“DEEP is a success story because DEEP is a special project”, underlined  DEEP Scientific Coordinator and member of the PDCO-EMA Adriana Ceci at the regional conference “Meeting EuroMed Common Challenges”, organised in Cairo by the European Commission to launch Horizon 2020.

The new EU programme for Research and Innovation, which will be the successor of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7), is set to be implemented in the period from 2014 to 2020 and represents the largest collaborative research programme in the world, with an overall budget of €79 billion.

DEEP represents an example of well-performed project focused on paediatrics and rare diseases born in the context of FP7 topic “HEALTH.2010.4.2-1” dedicated to paediatrics. The project, coordinated by the Consortium for Biological and Pharmacological Evaluations (CVBF), is proceeding successfully. “So far a new formulation is available to the investigational sites and used in the trials, the DEEP-1 study is concluding recruitment with success while DEEP-2 and DEEP-3 are positively on-going” outlined Professor Adriana Ceci, who added, “Responding to the EU Policy needs dealing with the paediatric population is the project’s specificity”.

Professor Ceci provided also some general considerations on the positive impact and outcomes given by all paediatric projects born in the context of the FP7 program and concluded her speech on the Horizon 2020 calls of interest in the field of paediatrics.