Medicines for Children
Many medicines, even essential medicines, are not licensed for paediatric use. The use of unlicensed and off-label medicines for children has been common practice for years, meaning that children often may not receive the same quality, safety and efficacy from their medicines as adults. Many drugs used in children have not been adequately developed in paediatric indications resulting in “off label” use of unlicensed adult medicines in children.
Additional challenges that specifically relate to the development of paediatric formulations include the necessity to avoid certain excipients that are not suitable for children, swallowing difficulties in some patients and the need for accurate dose administration and often titration for varying ages and weights. Many medicines are manipulated by pharmacists, parents and carers who may have to crush tablets, mix granules or open capsules to disperse in food or drinks therefore creating a risk of under or over dosage as well as inconsistent dosing.
Proveca has worked with the European Medicine Agency’s Paediatric Committee to gain a Paediatric-Use Marketing Authorisation (PUMA) for the symptomatic treatment for severe sialorrhoea (chonic pathological drooling) in children and adolescents with chronic neurological disorders.
Our paediatric drug development is currently focused upon researching and developing children’s epilepsy medication and treatment of heart failure in children, while further developing cerebral palsy medication to improve quality of life.
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‘We are a Family of Passionate Pioneers’
In Proveca our vision is to provide licensed medicines which have been designed specifically for children.
Proveca develops and commercialises novel therapies for the treatment of children globally. By Starting with the child in mind, we design, develop and deliver medicines to address their unmet medical needs
Our Research and Development programmes evaluates innovative pharmaceutical formulations, which provide improved dose flexibility, easy administration and therefore better acceptance of drugs by children, and generates the clinical evidence to enable evidence based prescribing and treatment of children.
Welcome to the Proveca Values:
- In 2018, after Proveca had been a commercial organisation for a little over a year, it was felt that it would be beneficial for the company to reflect on who it was, what it had become and what it wanted to be in the future.
- The initial research involved an expert (Tim Reid) interviewing 16 people from across the business and across the EU to get a feel for what Proveca meant to them.
- From those interviews, the information gained was boiled down to a “strapline” that encompassed three core values:
Family, Passion, Pioneering
So, what do these three core values really mean to us?
Family
What Family means to us
While many business cultures are about co-operation between individuals who may be ultimately competing with each other, being in a family is about having a vested interest in each other’s success and wellbeing.
Creating a family requires deep (not superficial or fleeting) relationships, a real interest in individuals as whole people (not just roles or skills) and a healthy blurring of the lines between work and play.
The payoff is real trust, unquestioning support, no hidden agendas and genuine enjoyment of each other’s company.
Passion
What Passion means to us
Being passionate means truly believing in what you do and why you do it.
It’s a rare and special organisation that can claim its teams are passionate about their work and their Company.
At Proveca we are passionate about developing and delivering medicines to children to address their unmet medical needs
Pioneering
What Pioneering means to us
Being pioneers is about leading the way, doing things that haven’t been done before, being first.
But in order to achieve that, pioneering needs to be a way of being, not a one-off act. Pioneers need to be comfortable not having evidence of previous success or established protocols to follow.
They need to have a clear plan but adapt or even abandon that plan in the face of what they encounter.
They need a ‘learner’ mindset – the curiosity to try things out and understand what they don’t know.
While pioneers have a drive to be first, they are also happy to be followed by others and to celebrate being a catalyst for change.
PCOM-AU-V2
Reviewed November 2021
