The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) has officially announced the
construction of an EU-wide public-private partnership, the "European Lead
Factory", to combine a comprehensive collection of candidate drug
molecules - a Joint European Compound Collection - with an industry-like
European Screening Centre.
Michel Goldman, IMI's Executive Director commented: "The joint
screening centre will give academic teams a unique opportunity to work in
conditions that meet industry standards, facilitating the translation of their
findings into actual treatments for patients. This shared facility, together
with the joint European Compound Collection, will greatly advance the chances
of success in the discovery of new medicines for researchers in Europe."
The pharmaceutical companies involved in the future project have committed
to contributing at least 300 000 chemical compounds from their otherwise
safeguarded corporate chemical collections. The teams of universities and small
and medium-sized enterprises in the project will have access to this unique
library of chemicals, and are expected to add another 200 000 compounds. The
Screening Centre will build on industry’s expertise in so called
'high-throughput screening' - a testing method in which robots test hundreds of
thousands of unique chemicals for biological activity.
The European Lead Factory will provide to public partners an
'industry-like' discovery platform to translate cutting-edge academic research
into high-quality candidate drug molecules on a scale and speed that was not
possible previously. Such candidates will be directly introduced to the drug
development process for further refinement or will serve as research tools to
improve our understanding of disease mechanisms.
The total budget for the project announced in IMI's 5th Call for proposals
amounts to €169 million. Up to €80 million will be provided by the European
Commission's 7th Framework Programme for Research (FP7), and the remaining
amount of up to €89 million will be provided in in kind contributions by the
participating companies that are members of the European Federation of
Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).
About IMI
The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is the world's largest public-private partnership in drug research. By linking industry, academic teams, regulators and patients' organisations in joint research and training projects, IMI is transforming the EU's ecosystem for pharmaceutical R&D, making Europe a more attractive place for private investment in innovation. By sharing research results that have not been brought together previously, IMI project partners are building new methods, models and tools that will speed up the development of novel therapies. IMI is funded jointly by the European Union (€1 billion in cash) and EFPIA, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (€1 billion in in-kind contributions).