IMI News
- IMI 2 – Call 1 indicative topic texts online
- Webinar organised by Fit for Health 2.0 on IMI 2
- IMI Stakeholder Forum 2014 – presentations now available!
- IMI - JDRF Diabetes Patient Focus meeting
- IMI 2 legislation approved by Council
- New report highlights quality and quantity of IMI project research outputs
News from our projects
IMI 2 – Call 1 indicative topic texts online
IMI has now published the indicative texts for the two topics which will make up the first IMI Call under IMI 2. Due to be launched this coming July, the topics under consideration are:
- translational approaches to disease modifying therapy of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), and
- discovery and validation of novel endpoints in dry age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.
Webinars will be organised immediately after the Call is officially launched to provide potential applicants with detailed information on the topics – for the latest information on the webinar schedule, join the IMI LinkedIn group or follow us on Twitter. Further details and registration for these webinars will be communicated via the IMI website.
IMI is also planning an Open Info Day in September, with topic workshops presented by EFPIA and opportunities to find out more from the IMI Executive Office on IMI 2 Calls for proposals.
Please note that all information regarding IMI 2 and future Calls for proposals is indicative and subject to the entry into force of the IMI 2 legislative package and the agreement of the IMI Governing Board on the Call topics. Final information about IMI’s future Calls will be communicated after approval by the IMI Governing Board.
Webinar organised by Fit for Health 2.0 on IMI 2
Fit for Health 2.0 which supports SMEs and researchers who wish to participate in Horizon 2020 Health-related projects, including IMI projects, is holding a webinar about IMI 2. The webinar will take place on 11th June from 10:00 to 11:30 and will focus on the aspects of IMI 2’s new IMI Call framework. IMI’s Legal Manager, Magali Poinot, and IMI’s Senior Scientific Project Officer Hugh Laverty are presenting the benefits of participating in the new IMI Calls for proposals, in particular for SMEs and academic research managers who may be interested in its intellectual property protection and rules for participation.
The online session is free of charge. Registration is via the Fit for Health website.
The deadline for registration is 6 June 2014.
IMI Stakeholder Forum 2014 – presentations now available!
250 participants joined IMI for its annual Stakeholder Forum. The event took place in Brussels, Belgium, on 21 May. 200 people also followed the event via webstreaming.
Participants included policy-makers, industry decision-makers, SMEs, patient groups, academia and researchers, representatives of other public-private partnerships (PPPs) and research funding organisations.
This year’s event featured two sessions. The morning focused on breakthrough scientific trends in stem cell research, featuring a keynote lecture by Ole Isacson from Harvard Medical School, as well as presentations by IMI projects working on and with stem cells, and by Ruth McKernan from Neusentis – a Pfizer Research Unit.
The afternoon discussions were dedicated to introducing IMI 2, in order to open a debate on the future directions of IMI. After interventions by EFPIA and the European Commission as IMI founding organisations, a stakeholder panel opened a lively discussion on how IMI can drive health innovation under Horizon 2020.
Presentations featured at the IMI Stakeholder Forum are now available on the IMI website. Videos of the speaker interventions will shortly be available on the same webpage.
IMI - JDRF Diabetes Patient Focus meeting
As part of the IMI patient focus meeting initiative, a diabetes patient meeting took place on 20 May in Brussels, Belgium. The event brought together over 100 stakeholders in the field of diabetes research. While diabetic patients played a central role at the event, participants also included patient carers and patient representatives, policy-makers, industry decision-makers, SMEs, academia and researchers, representatives of other public-private partnerships (PPPs), and research funding organisations in the field of diabetes.
The key focus of the event was on diabetic patients’ needs and perspectives, and on their input for scientists and for the pharmaceutical industry to help develop cures that will improve their quality of life.
The meeting covered the whole spectrum of diabetes, and went beyond the typical type 1 and 2 classifications. Representatives from IMI’s diabetes projects described how their research is addressing patients’ needs and opened a discussion on the best approaches for more personalised treatments in the future.
The event also explored directions for diabetes research in Europe from the policy-making perspective.
This event was jointly organised by IMI and JDRF, the leading global organisation funding type 1 diabetes (T1D) research.
The event was webstreamed live over the Internet to allow a wide audience to be involved in the debate.
Video recordings of the presentations held at the event, as well as the presentation files, will shortly be available on the event webpage.
IMI 2 legislation approved by Council
The European Council adopted on 6 May the IMI 2 regulation, following the European Parliament’s approval on 15 April. The legislation is expected to come into force on 27 June 2014.
IMI 2 will build on the successes of IMI in advancing research and development in areas of unmet medical need. The Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) of IMI 2 has been shaped on the World Health Organisation’s Report on Priority Medicines for Europe and the World – as well as on the input from more than 80 organisations, including regulators, patients, academia and learned societies. The initial focus of IMI2 will be on fields such as neurodegeneration, metabolic disorders, immune-mediated diseases, infections and translational safety. Indicative summaries of the topics under consideration for inclusion in the Calls for proposals that will be launched in 2014 under IMI 2 are now available on the Future Topics page of the IMI website.
The IMI 2 legislation is part of a wider €22 billion Innovation Investment Package, which includes 4 other Joint Technology Initiatives (namely Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2, Clean Sky 2, Electronic Components and Systems, and Bio-based Industries) as well as 4 public-public partnerships. The EU funding for IMI 2 will come from Horizon 2020, the European framework programme for research and innovation, which starts in 2014.
- Learn more about IMI 2
- Read the IMI 2 Strategic Research Agenda (SRA)
- Read the press releases on the adoption of the IMI 2 legislation by the European Council, European Commission and EFPIA
New report highlights quality and quantity of IMI project research outputs
The sheer quality and quantity of the research coming out of IMI’s projects is highlighted in the latest report for IMI by Thomson Reuters. The report analyses the citation impact of papers from IMI projects; this is a measure of how often a paper is cited by subsequent papers. The report reveals that by the end of 2013, IMI projects had delivered over 600 scientific publications which appeared in over 300 journals, including prestigious publications like Science, Nature, JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association), PNAS (the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) and more. Key findings from the report include:
- The citation index of papers from IMI projects is twice the world average, and higher than the EU average.
- Around a quarter of papers from IMI projects are ‛highly-cited’, that is, they are in the top 10% of papers for that journal category and year of publication, when ranked by number of citations received.
- IMI’s citation impact is comparable to that of the Wellcome Trust.
The analysis also highlights the impact of collaboration on citation impact. Almost two thirds of IMI papers have authors from different sectors (e.g. universities, industry, small biotech companies). Just over half of IMI papers have authors from different countries.
- The citation impact of papers with authors from different sectors is higher than that of papers with authors from just one sector
- The citation index of papers with co-authors from different countries is higher than that of papers with authors from just one country
U-BIOPRED wins best practice award at BIO-IT World
IMI’s severe asthma project U-BIOPRED has won a best practice award in the research and drug discovery category at the Bio-IT World Conference and Expo in the US. The award highlights how U-BIOPRED has successfully used the tranSMART platform to integrate and analyse different types of data from diverse sources, and enable the secure sharing of data among over 30 project partners. U-BIOPRED is working to identify different types of severe asthma to ensure patients receive the right treatments. The project is using the tranSMART platform for its knowledge management needs; tranSMART is in turn being further developed by the IMI project eTRIKS for use by IMI and other projects.
Set up in 2003, the Bio-IT World awards recognise cutting-edge approaches to the use of information technology to advance basic biomedical research, drug discovery, and clinical trials.
- Watch a video of U-BIOPRED scientist Yannis Pandis explaining knowledge management in the project.
ENABLE launches Call for antibiotic development programmes
IMI’s antimicrobial resistance project ENABLE has launched its second open call for promising Gram-negative programmes. If you have an interesting Gram-negative programme that targets Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and/or Acinetobacter baumannii and that meets the minimum activity thresholds specified within the call text, this is an opportunity to join the ENABLE project. Selected programmes will gain access to the ENABLE discovery pipeline, which can develop a programme through to phase I clinical trials and significantly accelerate your work. If you are interested in applying, please visit the open calls page of the project website for full details and a template for completing the short expression of interest. The application forms and guidance material have been revised following the project’s first Call, meaning that applying to be part of the programme is easier than ever.
- Deadline for applications: 27 June 2014
- Questions? Contact opencall[AT]nd4bb-enable.eu.
On-course hits the 6000 mark
On-course, the online course portal developed by IMI’s EMTRAIN project, now has information on over 6 000 courses in its catalogue. On-course was launched in 2012 with the goal of becoming Europe’s most comprehensive biomedical and medicines research and development postgraduate course portal. The 6 000 courses featured on the site today include Masters courses, PhDs, and short courses taught in organisations across Europe as well as over the internet. Users can search for courses by course type, language, location, scientific area and therapeutic area. It is also possible to select only courses taught under IMI’s Education & Training projects. The site provides extensive information on each course, including details of the course content, course fees, the credits given, and contact details of the course provider. A new release of on-course, with additional content and functionality, will go live in September.
- Visit on-course
Sign up for SafeSciMET’s next round of courses
Registration is now open for the next round of courses, starting in September 2014, offered by IMI project SafeSciMET. A good understanding of safety sciences is key for new and better medicines – from initial discovery to end use. With this in mind, SafeSciMET has developed 20 new Master-level courses in ‘safety sciences for medicines’ that are designed to meet the needs of scientists working in industry, regulatory organisations, and academia. Feedback from these courses has been extremely positive. Courses can be taken individually, or built into a well-defined study package, leading to a European Advanced Master’s Degree in Safety Sciences for Medicines, provided by the University of Constance, Germany, in close collaboration with other academic institutions providing the individual courses. For the first time, in response to student feedback, the project’s popular introductory course on safety sciences in drug discovery and development will be offered by a mix of distance or e-learning and face-to-face training.
For more information about the next SafeSciMET course cycle and the complete programme, or to send questions to the SafeSciMET team, consult the SafeSciMET website.
Get to know Open PHACTS at its community workshop
IMI’s Open PHACTS project will hold its 6th Community Workshop in London on 26 June to introduce members of the academic community to the Open PHACTS Discovery Platform. The Open PHACTS Discovery Platform is a freely-accessible infrastructure that integrates publicly-available data for applied life science research. The workshop will introduce attendees to the Open PHACTS Application Programming Interface (API) and showcase how it can be used to create new or enhance existing applications. Real life case studies will demonstrate how universities can use the Open PHACTS API and associated tools for teaching and research in drug discovery.
- Download the agenda
- Registration is free. To attend, write to london[AT]openphactsfoundation.org.