The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI): a new opportunity for scientific collaboration between academia and industry at the European level

The introduction of truly new drug treatments is dwindling to a troublesome extent in all fields of medicine, at the same time as the costs for drug development are skyrocketing. New strategies are urgently required as old schemes for drug development are failing. The largest European public–private partnership in biomedical research, the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), is therefore launched. IMI is a unique pan-European research and development (R&D) initiative with the strategic focus of strengthening the competitiveness of European Union (EU)-based biopharmaceutical industry by, amongst other activities, supporting research that aims at a faster discovery and development of safer and more effective medicines for patients. The founding organisations of this new legal entity are the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) 1 and the European Commission (EC). The partnership is a \#8364;2 billion joint venture, which will be set up to run over the next 10 yrs. The funding system is balanced 1:1; the EC will contribute funding and the industry will contribute in kind, for instance by providing access to specialised expertise and platform approaches. Public consortia made up of universities, hospitals, regulatory authorities, small- and medium-sized biopharmaceutical and healthcare companies (or SMEs) and patient organisations will, on a competitive basis, be able to apply for funding; if this is approved, it will be matched by equal in-kind resources from the EFPIA members. The overarching objectives of IMI have been outlined in a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) of IMI 2, which was developed over the past 3 yrs by the Research Directorate of the EC and EFPIA via numerous consultations that included stakeholders, such as academic scientists, regulatory authorities and patient groups. The legal act on IMI was adopted by the Council in December 2007 and was published in the Official Journal of the European Union in February 2008 …