Pre-clinical drug development for paediatric cancer is very complex, resource intensive and requiring multi-disciplinary expertise and innovative approaches. “VAGABOND Validation of Actionable Genomic ABerrations in a paediatric Oncology Network for Doctorate students” aims to create a multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral program to validate new therapeutic interventions in paediatric cancer. The program is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network) and offers 15 fully funded PhD positions. The successful candidates will be hosted by a member of a European Consortium of universities, research institutions and companies in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and France.
This network will be sustainable embedded in the ITCC (Innovative Treatments for Children with Cancer) Consortium. The VAGABOND ITN will focus on 15 cutting-edge research projects studying molecular, epigenetic and immunological targets. All projects will (partly) include target identification, in vitro and in vivo validation, compound testing and preparation for clinical implementation. This consortium will highly stimulate international education and multi- disciplinary exchange of expertise in the different steps of pre-clinical drug development. This setting provides an opportunity for a unique European training network in which Early Stage Researchers (ESRs, PhDs) are equipped with a broad knowledge in pre-clinical drug development. Through this network PhD students will gain access to other leading academic research groups, specialized multi-sectoral companies and the most innovative techniques and insights in the complexity of translational medicine to prepare them for future challenges in their career pathway. In this collaboration we will increase the commune expertise on tumour types and technical expertise for target validation. This will improve the implementation of interventions across paediatric cancer and strongly reduce the timeline from bench to the bedside.