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Edress Darsey: After almost 24 years at Pfizer, today, I say goodbye

Photo taken from Edress Darsey/LinkedIn

Jan 5, 2024, 14:42

Edress Darsey: After almost 24 years at Pfizer, today, I say goodbye

Edress Darsey, Global Pediatric Medical Director/Pediatric Clinical Director – Pediatric Center of Excellence at Pfizer, recently posted on LinkedIn:

“As I approach the end of an incredible career at Pfizer, I want to thank those who were part of this dream come true!

In January 2014, Dr. Charlie Thompson and I started the Pfizer Pediatric Center of Excellence under the support and guidance of Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall, our Chief Medical Officer. New regulations required that most medicines brought to market be studied in children. After spending the first ten years of my career at the bedside at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, I knew firsthand the importance of pediatric dosing information established by science.

Designing and executing pediatric studies are vastly different from adult studies. Protocol designing is tedious and difficult for many reasons, especially considering the pharmacokinetic differences spanning ages from neonates to adolescents. The selection of appropriate sites to run pediatric studies is crucial, and partnerships with children’s hospitals and clinics are instrumental in completing these studies. Establishing Pfizer’s Pediatric Center of Excellence was pivotal in overcoming these challenges, resulting in trials explicitly designed with the pediatric participant in mind and partnerships with many children’s hospitals and clinics globally, enabling a successful, streamlined approach to study execution and completion.

Thank you to Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall for allowing us to build the Pediatric Center and the incredible colleagues at Pfizer I have worked alongside and learned from over the years; I will miss you! The partnerships with children’s hospitals and clinics were essential; thank you to the research centers, principal investigators, coordinators, and study teams for your ongoing collaboration with us; it made a significant difference in the execution of our research. Finally, thanks to the parents, families, caregivers, and children participating in our studies. You have enormously contributed to scientific information for treating sick children and preventing illness.

After almost 24 years at Pfizer, today, I say goodbye; dreams that come true don’t always last forever, but new chapters bring great hope. Thank you for staying in touch, and let’s continue this important journey together for children.”

Source: Edress Darsey/LinkedIn