Est. 2min 05-05-2008 (updated: 28-05-2012 ) petrischale.jpg Euractiv is part of the Trust Project >>> Languages: Français | DeutschPrint Email Facebook X LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram A joint Commission-pharma industry research initiative to speed up the development of new drugs and cut down development costs began operating on 30 April 2008. In line with the recommendations of the strategic research agenda for the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a first call for proposals for research projects in the areas of brain disorders, metabolic and inflammatory diseases was launched on 30 April 2008. Some €123 million will be granted to the most promising research projects in these areas later this year. In the future, IMI calls will also cover cancer and infectious diseases. The IMI, a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), will fund research into these five fields of diseases with some €2 billion over the next five years. The aim is to address current long delays or bottlenecks in the pharmaceutical R&D process. The identified bottlenecks for which better tools are required to speed up the discovery and development of new drugs are: Safety evaluation: speeding up identification of new products with the best benefit–risk ratios and a greater likelihood of success; Prediction of efficacy: the development of biomarkers that can be used as tools to understand the biology of a disease and the effects of a new pharmaceutical compound; Knowledge management: supporting safety and efficacy of projects as well as information sharing, modelling and simulation tasks, and; Gaps in education and training: supporting the medicine development process. Projects involving a variety of stakeholders – academia, research centres, SMEs, patient groups, public authorities and competitors in the research-based pharmaceutical industry – will thus be funded on these issues up to 2013 to improve the drug development process for new medicines for cancer and brain disorders and inflammatory, metabolic and infectious diseases. The initiative also foresees the establishment by 2013 of a European Medicines Research Academy (EMRA), “a pan-European platform for educating and training current and future professionals involved in biomedical R&D, including regulatory officers”. Read more with Euractiv Privacy chief: EU research must consider data protection The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) wants EU research projects to take account of privacy and data protection requirements from early on, in particular when developing information and communication technologies. Subscribe now to our newsletter EU Elections Decoded Email Address * Politics Newsletters Positions"The aims of the IMI are ambitious," acknowledged EU Research Commissioner Janez Poto?nik. The initiative is about pooling public and private efforts so that "Europe can be a big player" and become the world champion in biopharmaceutical research "by moving from individual project-funding, to joint programme funding involving industry and public stakeholders," he said. "Challenges in biomedical sciences have become so complex that no single research-based pharmaceutical company is able to face them alone," said Arthur J. Higgins, the president of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) and CEO of Bayer HealthCare. The IMI is "a tremendous illustration of how the European industry can join forces with the EU and all the stakeholders like SMEs, academia, patient groups, regulators [...] and unlock the full innovation potential of Europe," he added. "IMI brings together experts from the laboratory and the clinic working on new approaches to better predict as early as possible whether a drug works in a patient and whether it is safe. Earlier access by patients in need to new effective treatments is the ultimate goal of this joint initiative," stated Jonathan Knowles, the chairman of the IMI governing board. Professor Hans-Georg Eichler, senior medical officer at the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) said the current drug development process is indeed inefficient and that the "ongoing paradigm is not sustainable". He said IMI is the EU equivalent of the United States' Critical Path Initiative, which incidentally has received zero funding so far. BackgroundAnnounced in the EU's Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7), Joint Technology Initiatives (JTIs) are meant to establish long-term, public-private partnerships on specific research areas, combining private-sector investment with national and European public funding. The novelty of these initiatives is that the research topics would be defined by industry. They also represent a move away from the traditional approach of case-by-case public funding of projects to concentrate resources on a few strategic issues, defined by industry in specific fields. One of the six areas in which JTIs could be established is innovative medicines. The aim of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is not to produce new drugs, but to conduct research into tools to develop new drugs, overcome bottlenecks in the development of innovative medicines and boost investment in European biopharmaceutical R&D. It currently takes up to 10-13 years to develop a drug and bring it to the market. Only one potential drug in 10,000 reaches the market and one drug costs up to €800 million to develop. In addition, according to the Commission, the IMI "is all the more important as Europe was once known as the 'world's pharmacy'". Until 1998, it said, seven out of ten new medicines originated from Europe, whereas today the number is only three out of ten. Timeline 15 July 2008: Deadline for submission of project proposals for the first call. Further ReadingEuropean Union Commission press release:A public-private research initiative to boost the competitiveness of Europe's pharmaceutical industry(30 April 2008) [FR] [FR] [DE] PreLex:Proposal for a Regulation setting up the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking [FR] [FR] [DE] Commission memo:Joint Technology Initiatives, a new EU research initiative: Frequently asked questions(15 May 2007) Commission:Joint Technology Initiatives Governments US Food and Drug Administration:FDA's Critical Path Initiative Business & Industry European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) press release:Public private partnerships are essential to address medicines discovery slowdown(30 April 2008) Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) press release:By joining resources Europe and the pharmaceutical industry gain the lead(30 April 2008)
