Partnerships

International Perinatal Research (INPRES) Partnership

The INPRES Partnership is a collaboration between institutions around the world, leading and undertaking research in the field of perinatology.

The Partnership, founded in 2021 by two world-leading paediatric clinical trials unit: Melbourne Children's Trial Centre (MCTC) and the University of Oxford's National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU) Clinical Trials Unit, aims to support clinicians and researchers in developing and facilitating clinical trials and observational research projects in the perinatal, neonatal, and paediatric population.

The goal of INPRES is to enable the world's experts in the perinatal, neonatal, and paediatric clinical research field to work together to improve diagnosis, implement personalised treatment decisions, and develop new treatment strategies that will benefit newborn infants and their families around the world.

The cross-border sharing of expertise, knowledge and leveraging of scientific and clinical strengths between leading perinatal clinician scientists and clinical trial teams, will accelerate and advance the development and execution of collaborative, international, investigator-led research.

Through the Partnership, collaborations are facilitated to promote and foster clinical research, combining research efforts already underway in addition to developing new research proposals. This involves cooperation at multiple levels including the individual project level, as well as partnering to develop the infrastructure required to support programs of research.

All members will work together to lay the groundwork for future networking prospects, with the intent of expanding to include additional perinatal, neonatal, and paediatric research groups globally, in order to further accomplish its mission.

Current Partners

The Murdoch Children's Research Institute

Visit The Murdoch Children's Research Institute website.

Visit the Melbourne Children's Trial Centre (MCTC) website

The University of Oxford

Vist the University of Oxford website

Visit the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU) Clinical Trials Unit website

Current Research Activities

The POLAR Clinical Trial

The Partnership's flagship project, the POLAR trial, aims to establish how to best, and safely, support the fragile lungs of premature babies at birth.

This trial will compare two commonly used respiratory strategies that both use gentle pressure to open the lungs. The trial will assess whether a brief period of higher oxygen pressure at birth, called PEEP (positive end expiratory pressure), which is adjusted to the oxygen and breathing needs of the baby, helps premature babies immediately after birth, and improves their survival without chronic lung disease, compared with the current typical newborn resuscitation practice of a using a lower, unchanging level of PEEP (commonly referred to as static PEEP).

Through this we hope to give guidance to clinicians that can be easily, rapidly, and cheaply be translated into everyday practice.

The James Lind Alliance (JLA) Priority Setting Partnership in the Tiniest Infants

The James Lind Alliance (JLA) is a non-profit making initiative, established in 2004. It brings patients, carers, and clinicians together in Priority Setting Partnership's (PSPs). These PSPs identify and prioritise evidence uncertainties, or unanswered questions, that patients, carers, and clinicians agree are the most important.

The aim of this exercise is to help ensure that those who fund health research are aware of what really matters to the people who need to use the research in their everyday lives.

The specific aim of our PSP exercise is to prioritise the most important questions for the most premature of infants born <25 weeks of gestation.