Innovative Medicines Initiative: a unique collaboration
The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is a unique public-private partnership designed by the European Commission and EFPIA. It is a pan-European collaboration that brings together large biopharmaceutical companies, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), patient organisations, academia, hospitals and public authorities. The initaive aims to accelerate the discovery and development of better medicines by removing bottlenecks in the drug development process. It focuses on creating better methods and tools that improve and enhance the drug development process, rather than on developing specific, new medicines.
The European Commission and EFPIA have jointly established a new, non-profit European Community body. This organisation has a legal mandate to award research grants to European public-private collaborations conducting innovative research projects that focus on implementing the recommendations of the IMI Research Agenda.
The IMI Research Agenda was established under the lead of industry following intensive consultations with a broad range of stakeholders from across Europe. It identifies the principal research bottlenecks in the biopharmaceutical R&D process and sets forth recommendations to overcome these bottlenecks by focusing on four areas:
- Predicting Safety: this addresses bottlenecks related to accurately evaluating the safety of a compound during the pre-clinical phase of the development process, but also impacts the later phases in clinical development.
- Predicting Efficacy: this addresses bottlenecks in the ability to predict how a drug will interact in humans and how it may produce a change in function.
- Knowledge Management: as an underpinning theme, this addresses the more effective utilisation of information and data for predicting safety and efficacy.
- Education & Training: as a second underpinning theme this closes existing training gaps in the drug development process.
|