94th Edition – October 2019

Contribute to the survey on medication safety for new and expectant mothers

Evidence suggests that up to 95 % of the five million women who get pregnant in the EU every year will reach for a prescription drug at some point. And yet, only about 5 % of the medication they take comes with pregnancy and breast-feeding-related safety information. Now, IMI’s ConcePTION project is working to fill the data gap. As a first step, they are running a survey to gather as much information as possible about how women who are pregnant or breastfeeding are currently making choices about medication.

Elsewhere, the project aims to establish new and better ways to collect digital data and samples; create a Europe-wide breast milk biobank for research; develop tools to predict transferability of drugs medicines into breastmilk; and build a web-based drug info bank, presented in a way that women have a reliable single source and don’t need a medical degree to understand.

• Read more
• Take the survey

Data-driven personalised care for Alzheimer's patients

Approximately 50 million people worldwide live with dementia, a figure the World Health Organization predicts will triple to 152 million by 2050. By 2030, the global cost of dementia could reach more than USD 2 trillion. To improve the lives of those patients and reduce the associated costs, IMI’s RADAR-AD project is working on using detailed information about the health of each patient to transition from a ‘diagnose and treat’ to a ‘predict and pre-empt’ model of care.

RADAR-AD is combining mobile and smart home devices with data analytics technologies to provide enhanced care and remote health monitoring for patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at all stages of disease progression.

‘RADAR-AD gives patients the opportunity to be better informed about their own health status and to use this information to self-manage the disease. This will ultimately help personalise care for each patient and allow them to live independently for longer,’ says project coordinator Dag Årsland at King's College London. ‘In parallel, we anticipate that the platform will improve our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease subtypes and progression, supporting the development of new and more effective treatments.’

• Read more

Join the first FAIRplus Innovation and SME Forum

IMI’s FAIRplus project will hold the first FAIRplus Innovation and SME Forum on 29 January 2020 in Hinxton, UK, to discuss the challenges and opportunities for large companies and SMEs in adopting FAIR data practices. FAIR stands for ‘findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable’. The goal of FAIRplus is to make it easier for researchers to find and access relevant data and integrate them into their own research. The project will deliver guidelines and tools to facilitate the application of FAIR principles to data from other IMI projects and pharmaceutical companies.

The FAIRplus Innovation and SME Forum is aimed at companies working with life science data, companies planning to provide FAIRification services and anyone interested in FAIRification of their data. The main goal of the event is to present the first outcomes of the project and hear from companies providing FAIR data solutions about their experience. The participants will also learn about the FAIRplus Fellowship programme which offers comprehensive FAIR data training, including a short stay at one of FAIRplus consortium partners.

Participation is free of charge, but registration is required.

• Registration
• Full programme
• More about FAIRplus: fairplus-project.eu

IMI’s Ebola+ projects in the spotlight

Throughout October, we spotlighted some of the results of our Ebola-related research projects in our newsroom. Most of IMI’s 12 Ebola projects were launched in 2014-2015 when an unprecedented Ebola outbreak ravaged parts of western Africa. The epidemic killed thousands of people and terrified communities, and took two and a half years to be brought under control.

Since then, IMI researchers have been involved in testing the safety, efficacy and durability of two candidate vaccines that show the most promise in preventing infection. Both vaccines, rVSV∆G-ZEBOV-GP and the ‘prime boost’ vaccine regimen (Ad26.ZEBOV and MVA-BN-Filo) are currently undergoing clinical trials. IMI-backed researchers have also come up with new rapid diagnostic tests for Ebola. Other projects focused on reducing the onerous conditions for vaccine storage and transport, preparing for large-scale manufacture of vaccines and even running community engagement campaigns for the success of clinical trials.

Read the articles:

• Focus on Ebola
• Ebola can now be detected in 15 minutes. Here’s how the diagnostics tests work
• How do you prepare for a pandemic? – editorial by Pierre Meulien, IMI Executive Director
• As Ebola rages in the DRC, the world is closer than ever to the first licensed vaccine
• Project to team up with African manufacturer to make diagnostic tests

Coming up in November: Focus on antimicrobial resistance

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is becoming one of the defining problems of our time. As bacteria become resistant to the drugs that are supposed to kill them, scientists, policy makers and the pharmaceutical industry are looking at different ways to fix the problem before it’s too late. IMI has invested heavily in AMR research. In November, we will be taking a look at some IMI projects and the different angles from which they’re tackling the problem – from rapid diagnostics and public health policy, to permeability and prophylactic vaccines.

We’ll be publishing new stories throughout November in our newsroom; follow @IMI_JU on Twitter for updates. We will also publish links to all the AMR articles in the next edition of the newsletter.

Find out more about IMI’s AMR projects:

• IMI New Drugs for Bad Bugs programme
• IMI AMR Accelerator Programme