The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is Europe’s largest public-private initiative between the EU and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. IMI supports collaborative European research projects to support pharmaceutical innovation in Europe.
The second IMI programme (IMI2) will aim at delivering tools, methods and prevention and treatment options (directly or indirectly) that will progress the vision of personalised medicine and prevention. It is not purely focused on the development of new medicines, but on solutions that provide a holistic, personalised rel="noopener noreferrer" healthcare package. The Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for IMI 2 is set to achieve the vision of delivering ‘the right prevention and treatment to the right patient at the right time’ for priority diseases.
Calls for proposals
IMI2 has published details of the topics for its Calls 15 and 16. Among the health issues addressed are brain disorders (e.g. Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, major depression) and immune-mediated diseases (e.g. rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, as well as inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's and colitis, and skin diseases like dermatitis and psoriasis).
The topics also aim to make clinical trials more patient-centric, contribute to medicines safety, and apply blockchain technologies to the drug development and health sectors.
Topics for Stage 1 calls include:
And for Stage 2 calls, topics include:
The deadline for Stage 1 submissions is 24 October June 2018, and 15 May 2019 for Stage 2 submissions.
Topics for IMI Call 14
The deadline for Stage 1 submissions for Call 14 has passed. The deadline for Stage 2 submissions is 11 December 2018.
Details of all four topics, including the budget breakdown, how to apply and how to find project partners, can be found on the Call 14 webpage.
Strategic Research Agenda
The Strategic Research Agenda highlights priorities for the €20bn programme. IMI2 will endeavour to address major bottlenecks from discovery to delivery.
Target identification and biomarker research (efficacy and safety)
IMI2 will focus on gaining better understanding of disease mechanisms to facilitate target identification and use this knowledge for the identification of biomarkers predictive of efficacy, as well as biomarkers that may serve as surrogate markers in clinical trials.
Driving the adoption of innovative clinical trial design
IMI2 will drive towards innovative concepts to be used in clinical trials, such as precision medicine. It will assist in developing new patient focused outcome measures; new trial paradigms to support the evaluation of benefit/risk in small numbers of patient populations and the development of infrastructures for the collection and sharing of trial data, together with methods for meta-analysis of trial data to investigate outcomes across multiple trials in different locations.
Innovative Medicine
Preventative medicine – to address the needs of an ageing population and increased incidence of chronic disease.
Medicines for areas of high public health concern – stimulation of research and investment where there is high public health concern and where industry has largely withdrawn from research – such as antibiotic resistance and stroke.
Patient tailored adherence programmes – design of effective adherence programmes with an integrated approach including a range of services.
Disease areas of focus
11 priority disease areas have been highlighted as a priority for the European healthcare system and the pharmaceutical industry:
- Antimicrobial resistance
- Osteoarthritis
- Cardiovascular disease
- Diabetes
- Neurodegenerative diseases
- Psychiatric disease
- Respiratory diseases
- Autoimmune diseases
- Ageing associated diseases/conditions
- Cancer
- Orphan disease