EU & Competition news
10 September 2008 The European Commission has launched a public-private research initiative to boost the competitiveness of Europe's pharmaceutical industry The European Commission and the pharmaceutical industry have begun work on implementing the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). The initiative aims to remove severe bottlenecks in the drug development process through innovative research projects, helping to accelerate the discovery and development of new medicines. It will launch later in 2008 with promised research projects in the areas of brain disorders, metabolic and inflammatory diseases. Janez Potočnik, European Science and Research Commissioner, said that the project was the first step in promoting Europe as a big player in the pharmaceuticals market, “IMI is about pooling public and private efforts to make Europe the best in the world”. He continues, “biopharmaceutical research will from individual project-funding, to joint programme funding involving industry and public stakeholders." The Innovative Medicines Initiative is a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). The drug development for a new chemical or biological candidate is estimated to cost over €1bn and takes on average 12-and-a-half years to bring a new medicine to the market. Out of every 10,000 substances synthesized in laboratories, only one or two will successfully pass all the stages to become marketable medicines. This project is all the more important as Europe was once known as the “world’s pharmacy” where until 1998, 70 per cent of new medicines originated from Europe. This has now fallen to about 30 per cent. The Initiative aims to boost Europe’s competitiveness in biopharmaceutical innovation and foster Europe as the most attractive place for pharmaceutical research and development. The pharmaceutical industry is a knowledge based sector that has a huge impact on employment for highly trained people. It provides Europe with high skilled jobs - in 2004 more than 612,000 with 103,000 employees in the research area. Europe produces more than 35 per cent of the world’s pharmaceutical output, worth some €161bn, making it second only to the US as a manufacturing location. The President of EFPIA, Arthur Higgins says it is important that the main causes of delays in bringing drugs to market are addressed, “The decline in the number of new drugs is due to a combination of scientific, regulatory and economic factors. We as an industry are ready to play our part in bringing forward medical innovation but cannot solve all these issues by ourselves”. The initiative brings together experts from the laboratory and the clinic working on new approaches to better predict as early as possible whether a drug works in a patient and whether it is safe. Earlier access to new treatments is the ultimate goal of this joint initiative. It has a total budget of €2bn until 2013. In 2008 grants of €123m will be handed to the most promising research projects in the areas of brain disorders, metabolic and inflammatory diseases. In future, the initiative will also cover cancer and infectious diseases. These areas have been chosen because they are, primarily, important areas of medical need that are currently not fully met, affecting the lives of millions of European citizens. A fact-sheet on the Innovative Medical Initiative can be downloaded at: http://imi.europa.eu/docs/imi-factsheet_en.pdf
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