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EFPIA, the voice of the research-based pharmaceutical industry in Europe, welcomes the launch today by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) public-private partnership, a €223.7 million programme to tackle antimicrobial resistance and to speed up the development of new antibiotics.
The threat to public health from antibiotic resistance requires collaboration and strong commitment. Building on the European Commissions’ Action Plan against the rising threats from Antimicrobial Resistance, launched last November, today’s announcement illustrates the will of the pharmaceutical industry to embrace innovative solutions to deliver new and effective antibiotics to patients.
The goal of this new research programme is to capitalise on the innovative and collaborative public-private partnership approach, underpinned by an unprecedented level of data sharing in this field that will positively impact all aspects of antimicrobial resistance.
Richard Bergström, Director-General of EFPIA said: “Our researchers and the scientific community has realised that we can only deal with this urgent threat by working together and pooling our knowledge. IMI is perfectly suited for such open innovation. And by co-funding clinical trials, policy makers in Europe have created a strong incentive for companies and investors to come back to this field of research”.
The underlying reason for the call is the need for public and private partners to work together to tackle the antibiotic resistance problem we face in Europe. The scientific and regulatory challenges facing antibiotic development are enormous. It is essential that academic and industrial scientists join forces to progress the discovery and development of novel antibiotic medicines for the treatment of the most urgent infections.
IMI’s programme is part of the European Commissions’ Action Plan. Today sees the launch of the first set of projects to be funded in this area, announced today in IMI’s 6th Call for proposals, a joint budget of up to €223,7 million is foreseen (€109 million IMI funding + €114,7 million in kind contribution by participating EFPIA companies).
A number of additional projects are currently under development with a total estimated budget of nearly €600M over the 7 year programme.
For the longer-term, we will build on what we are learning through IMI and integrate that learning in our proposal for future collaboration.
