The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is Europe’s largest public-private partnership aiming to improve the drug development process by supporting a more efficient discovery and development of better and safer medicines for patients. The legislation establishing IMI 2 was approved by the EU Member States on 6 May 2014. IMI 2 will be launched later in 2014 and will run for 10 years, with a total proposed budget of €3.3 billion. http://www.imi.europa.eu/content/imi-2
IMI 2 aims to deliver:
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A 30% better success rate in clinical trials of priority medicines identified by the WHO;
• Clinical proof of concept in immunological, respiratory, neurological and neurodegenerative diseases in just five years;
• New and approved diagnostic markers for four of these diseases and at least two new medicines which could either be new antibiotics or new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.
Indicative summaries of the topics under consideration for inclusion in the Calls for proposals that will be launched in 2014 are now available from: http://www.imi.europa.eu/content/future-topics
The IMI Stakeholder Forum, is taking place in Brussels on the 21st May. http://www.imi.europa.eu/events/2014/03/13/imi-stakeholder-forum-2014 It will provide an opportunity to learn about and discuss the results of IMI 1 and IMI activities and plans. The morning session will have a strong scientific focus on breakthrough scientific trends in stem cells research, and the afternoon session will focus on the next phase of IMI, in order to open a debate with all IMI’s stakeholders on how to drive health innovation under Horizon 2020. Registration to this event is free of change, but compulsory. https://imi-stakeholder-forum2014.teamwork.fr/en/registration
The event is expected to be attended by approximately 250 participants, including policy-makers, industry decision-makers, SMEs, patient groups, academia and researchers, representatives of other public-private partnerships (PPPs) and research funding organisations.
Stakeholder Forum participants are also welcome to attend the IMI-JDRF Diabetes Patient Focus meeting, which will be held at the same venue on Tuesday 20 May. http://www.imi.europa.eu/events/2014/03/25/imi-jdrf-diabetes-patient-focus-meeting
