IMI News
- Save the date! IMI Stakeholder Forum on 30 May
- Antimicrobial resistance Call due for launch in May
- Indicative 7th Call topics announced
- IMI to hold special symposium at major kidney conference
- IMI 5th Call for proposals – deadline approaching
- Experts set out framework for evaluating PPPs
- ‘Join forces to unleash creative potential’ - IMI Governing Board Chair
- IMI presentations at forthcoming conferences
News from our projects
Save the date! IMI Stakeholder Forum on 30 May
IMI will hold its annual Stakeholder Forum in Brussels, Belgium on 30 May. In addition to discussions on IMI’s achievements, the event will feature presentations of IMI’s indicative forthcoming Call topics on antimicrobial resistance, vaccines, and effectiveness research. Registration, which will open shortly, is free but obligatory. The event has been scheduled to take place the day after the European Commission’s Open Information Day on Health Research.
Antimicrobial resistance Call due for launch in May
IMI’s highly-anticipated Call for proposals on antimicrobial resistance has been scheduled for launch in May. The topic will be presented at the forthcoming Stakeholder Forum on 30 May, and webinars will also be held to give potential applicants the opportunity to ask questions about the Call text. To stay up to date with latest news on the Call launch, visit the IMI website regularly.
Indicative 7th Call topics announced
Currently, two topics are under consideration for inclusion in IMI's 7th Call for proposals:
- Building a sustainable framework for rapid assessment of vaccination impact in Europe
- New approaches to effectiveness research
The topic texts are under development, and the draft topics will be presented at the forthcoming Stakeholder Forum. To stay up to date with the latest news on the topics, visit IMI’s Future Topics page.
IMI to hold special symposium at major kidney conference
IMI, together with the Critical Path Institute and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health will hold a special symposium at 15:00 on 24 May at the ERA-EDTA (European Renal Association - European Dialysis and Transplant Association) Congress in Paris, France. The session, entitled ‘Drug-induced renal injury: the quest for sensitive biomarkers’, focuses on efforts to improve the detection of kidney damage caused by drugs. Among other things, the work of the IMI project SAFE-T in this area will be presented. The ERA-EDTA congress attracts thousands of kidney experts from Europe and beyond. The Scientific Programme covers basic and clinical nephrology, and has a major focus on the potential of translating research results into novel therapies and diagnostic tools.
IMI 5th Call for proposals – deadline approaching
The deadline for submitting Expressions of Interest in response to IMI’s 5th Call for proposals is 16 May at 23.55 Brussels time (CEST). Applicants are strongly advised to start uploading their applications into SOFIA (IMI’s new project information tool) well in advance of the deadline. Technical questions relating to SOFIA, as well as queries on the Call text itself, should be sent to Infodesk@imi.europa.eu. The aim of the 5th Call for proposals is to develop a European Lead Factory, comprising a joint European compound collection and screening centre.
Experts set out framework for evaluating PPPs
A framework for measuring the value of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the pharmaceutical sciences is the subject of a new paper in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. The proposed framework looks at both short and long-term successes and addresses, among other things, the PPP’s ability to bring together people, funds and knowledge; encourage knowledge sharing; boost education and training; and result in new products, partnerships, and money. The framework includes suggestions for measurable indicators. ‘As PPPs are an increasingly important and extensively used instrument for public and private stakeholders to address the innovation crisis in pharmaceutical [research and development], objective and relevant measurements that meet the needs of all stakeholders are essential,’ state the authors, who include staff from the IMI Executive Office and a member of the IMI Scientific Committee.
‘Join forces to unleash creative potential’ - IMI Governing Board Chair
‘The time is now for academia and industry to join forces and unleash the creativity potential in Europe, in order to harness new technology and discover new platforms that enable new medicines to be invented for the benefit of European citizens,’ states IMI’s new Governing Board Chair, Roch Doliveux of UCB, in a newly-released video on why IMI is good for innovation in Europe. ‘Right now the complexity of the new science is so big, the amount of data that exists is so vast, the opportunities are so large, that no company or academic can harness the power of this technology on their own.’
IMI presentations at forthcoming conferences
Below is an overview of some forthcoming events where staff from the IMI Executive Office and other IMI stakeholders will present IMI’s work and achievements.
- The European Technology Platforms (ETP's) and Industrial change
Brussels, Belgium, 4 May 2012
Michel Goldman, Executive Director of IMI, will present IMI’s work at this public hearing organised by the European Economic and Social Committee.
Event website
- Potential use of biomarkers of inflammation and of early immunological events to assess vaccine safety
Baltimore, US, 11 May 2012
IMI Executive Director Michel Goldman will chair a panel discussion on non-specific immunological effects of vaccines, emphasising the ongoing IMI projects on the safety and impact of vaccines
Event website
- 49th European Renal Association – European Dialysis and Transplant Association (ERA-EDTA) Congress
Paris, France, 24 May 2012
IMI will hold a special symposium on ‘Drug-induced renal injury: the quest for sensitive biomarkers’ on the opening day.
Event website
- FP7 Health Open Information Day
Brussels, Belgium, 29 May 2012
IMI Executive Director Michel Goldman and Senior Scientific Project Manager Hugh Laverty will present IMI’s work at this event to promote the European Commission’s Calls for proposals in the health research field. IMI will also have a stand at the exhibition.
Event website
- IMI Stakeholder Forum
Brussels, Belgium, 30 May 2012
The 2012 Stakeholder Forum will feature IMI project successes and workshops on forthcoming Call topics.
Event website
- Societal Impact of Pain 2012
Copenhagen, Denmark, 30 May 2012
IMI Principal Scientific Manager Elisabetta Vaudano will give a presentation during a workshop entitled ‘Benchmarking, education and research programmes on Pain management in the European Union’.
Event website
- HESI (Health and Environmental Sciences Institute) Annual Meeting
Prague, Czech Republic, 13 June 2012
Executive Director Michel Goldman will present IMI’s work during a mini symposium on drug safety issues in Europe.
Event website
- EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) 2012
Dublin, Ireland, 13 July 2012
IMI’s Education & Training projects will host a session entitled ‘European cohesion will help to promote the IMI education and training initiatives’, during which IMI Executive Director Michel Goldman will discuss ways of ensuring the sustainability of IMI projects.
Event website
Continuing Professional Development consultation launched
IMI’s Education & Training projects have launched a consultation on a common framework for continuing professional development (CPD) in the biomedical sciences. The basis for the consultation is a concept paper, which was drawn up in collaboration with diverse professional and scientific bodies. The paper explains why a common framework for CPD is needed, and sets out what is needed to develop the framework, such as discussions with stakeholders, a measure of course quality, the mutual recognition of training, and a way of testing the framework. All comments on the paper should be sent to the EMTRAIN Project Office (Ulrike Mayerhofer-Sebera) by 29 June 2012. The Education & Training projects’ work on quality standards in CPD training is also discussed in a recent paper in the European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Open PHACTS releases nanopublication guidelines
Scientists from IMI project Open PHACTS have put together a set of guidelines on nanopublications. ‘A nanopublication is the smallest unit of publishable information: an assertion about anything that can be uniquely identified and attributed to its author,’ the guide reads. The guidelines set out the elements of a nanopublication and outline the developments since the ‘Anatomy of a Nanopublication’ paper. The guidelines explain the Open PHACTS approach to nanopublication and how this relates to real-world data. This first set of guidelines will guide the next stage of implementation within the Open PHACTS project where nanopublications will be integrated with other forms of data to provide a unique view across pharmacology-related data.
eTOX makes progress on predictive toxicology
IMI project eTOX is making progress towards its goal of developing a predictive toxicology system called eTOXsys, which is now at the prototype stage. In a recent article in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, the eTOX partners describe eTOXsys as 'a software tool able to provide useful toxicological risk and hazard assessment.' Users will simply need to enter a small amount of information, such as the structure of the compound they are interested in, and the system will use a series of advanced models to deliver information on the likelihood of potential toxicity of the compound. The system will base its risk assessment on predictive tools built on data held in diverse databases, coming from public sources and, most notably, legacy toxicity reports held by participating pharmaceutical companies, in what constitutes an unprecedented concerted effort at the international level. The data is currently being extracted, formatted and analysed by tools developed by the eTOX project. According to the project team, eTOXsys should significantly improve the quality of the current state of the art when it comes to computational predictions of the toxicity of new drug candidates.