The Innovative Medicines Initiative −10 Years of Public-Private Collaboration

Abstract

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is a public-private partnership between the European Union and the European pharmaceutical industry. Born of the necessity to foster collaboration between different stakeholders in order to address growing challenges in bringing new medicines to market and the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, IMI has successfully delivered the radical collaboration needed to address these challenges. In this article we reflect on some of the major achievements of the programme by highlighting a few of the key projects funded and the progress they have made, as well as some of the lessons learnt in delivering such an ambitious partnership. Those that drove the foundation of IMI recognized that to address these challenges required not just ambitious scientific approaches, but also an awareness of societal needs. Therefore, actors from beyond the traditional pharmaceutical research communities would be needed. One of the key successes of IMI has been to foster radical collaboration between diverse public and private partners of all types, including large pharmaceutical companies, SMEs, regulators, patient organizations and public research institutions. It has achieved this by being a neutral platform where all partners are bound by the same rights and responsibilities. Since it began there has been an evolution in the understanding of what is considered “pre-competitive,” resulting in IMI projects now addressing all of the steps within the pharmaceutical development value chain. With this expansion in the types of projects supported by IMI, different actors from beyond the traditional pharmaceutical research family have been attracted to participate, enriching further the collaboration at the heart of the programme. Finally, such a complex programme brings with it challenges, and we reflect on some of the important learnings that should be applied to future collaborative models to ensure that they are as successful as possible and deliver the expected impact.

Crowdsourcing and open innovation in drug discovery: recent contributions and future directions

“…Sometimes, these precompetitive collaborations are set up under the umbrella of a public–private partnership (PPP). One large PPP is the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) by the European Union [30] . Several projects are part of the IMI, such as the U-BIOPRED program, which addresses fundamental issues around asthma [31] or eTOX, which generated ∼200 in silico models for diverse end-points of toxicological interest [32] , and the European Lead Factory (ELF), which has developed a large compound library available for screening [33] .…”

Identification of Chemotherapeutic Dihydromyricetin With Enhanced Anti-tumor Activity and Biosafety for Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer

“…Original advances in the biomedical elds, especially innovative drug, technology and equipment, have greatly improved the existing clinical diagnosis and treatment systems [31,32]. For example, the application of chemotherapeutic agents has prolonged the survival of tumor patients signi cantly.…”

Public–private contribution to biopharmaceutical discoveries: a bibliometric analysis of biomedical research in UK

“…In conclusion, although the study covers an extensive period of time, the recent boost in public-private efforts, such as the Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI) at European level, may not be fully evidenced in our data. The IMI is a public-private partnership between the European Union and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries which have produced more than four thousand publications involving collaboration between researchers across different sectors, institutions and countries (Laverty and Meulien 2019). Our study does however extend the extant literature on academic founders by focusing on scientific founders of biotechnology companies.…”