IMI is Finally Open

On April 30 the first Call for Expression of Interest under the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) was presented at an official event in Brussels. The opening event brought together more than 500 high level stakeholders all sharing IMI's overall vision on boosting Europe's competitiveness in biopharmaceutical innovation and foster Europe as the most attractive place for pharmaceutical R&D. Recently MVA hosted a regional opening meeting with 50 participants discussing among other things consortia building.

MVA Assists with Matchmaking and Guidance

MVA has worked with IMI since August 2005, and our aim is to support Medicon Valley stakeholders in their pursuit for IMI participation. MVA will give support during the entire Expression of Interest (EOI) preparation process on request. With an extensive network both inside and outside the region our main role is to work as a matchmaker, assisting interested stakeholders in finding the relevant partners. We furthermore follow the IMI process closely and constantly increase our knowledge on how to interpret the evaluation criteria.

On May 9 MVA arranged and hosted a regional opening meeting in Ørestad with focus on application rules and guidelines, and discussions on how to make a successful consortia and EOI. Moreover, concrete consortia building discussions for the specific calls where conducted. Approximately 50 persons joined the meeting and at least two consortiums for two different calls are under development as a result of this meeting. Hopefully these consortia's will be successful and MVA will assist in any way possible.

IMI Application and Evaluation Process

At the official opening event in Brussels the specific scientific content of the 18 different calls was presented together with the application rules and procedures and the criteria's subject for evaluation of the EOI. The deadline for submitting an EOI is July 15, so the amount of time for establishing a competitive consortium, agreeing on a scientific case and getting the EOI submitted for evaluation is limited.

The project participants are selected in a two-stage submission and evaluation process. At stage 1, EOI's are submitted to the IMI Joint Undertaking (IMI-JU) by the applying consortia. At stage 2, the best EOI's are invited to form joint consortia with pre-established EFPIA consortia already associated with the topics and to submit full project proposals. Only one consortium for each call is successful and invited to the second phase. This stresses the importance of building the right partnerships and selecting an innovative scientific approach, which covers the entire call. For more information you can download the IMI information package and call material here.

About IMI

IMI is a unique public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). IMI aims to remove severe bottlenecks in the drug development process through innovative research projects, the result of which will accelerate the discovery and development of new medicines. IMI has a total budget of € 2 billion until 2013. In 2008, grants of € 123 million will be handed to the most promising research projects in the areas of brain disorders, metabolic and inflammatory diseases. In future calls, from 2009 and onwards, IMI will also cover cancer and infectious diseases.

For more information on IMI, visit the IMI section at www.mva.org/imi.

Best regards,

Torsten Jepsen Senior Project Manager tj@mva.org