Maternal Infant Child & Youth Research Network (MICYRN)

MICYRN is a federal not-for-profit, charitable organization founded in 2006 to build capacity for high-quality, applied health research. The network links 21 maternal and child health research member organizations based at academic health centers in Canada. MICYRN is affiliated with more than 25 practice-based research networks, provides support to new and emerging teams, and has established strong national and international partnerships. In support of the clinician-scientists and clinician-investigators in the maternal and child health research space (around 150 investigators in the past 3 years), MICYRN has acquired the expertise to function as a de-centralized Academic Research Organization (ARO), a first in Canada for the non-oncology pediatric clinical trial space. The de-centralized ARO infrastructure offers the pre-award services of grant consultation, budget review, and protocol optimization including national and international scientific depth. The post-award services support the maternal-child health community by facilitating and/or providing regulatory application assistance, coordinated ethics submissions in partnerships with the CHEER initiative, quality assurance and monitoring, contract negotiation and facilitation, data management, and project management. In the past 24 months, MICYRN has provided pre- and post-award ARO services for over 20 clinical trials projects and currently serves as the collaboration centre for the CIHR Canadian Pediatric COVID-19 Research Platform POPCORN.

The Accelerating Clinical Trials Consortium is generously supported through multi-year funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Clinical Trials Fund, as part of Canada’s Biomanufacturing and Life Sciences Strategy to ensure that Canadians are well served by a national clinical trials network.