“The cooperation between all relevant agents must be reinforced to increase the efficacy of the development process of medicines, so that the pharmaceutical sector is able to produce- in the long term- innovative medicines which are safer and more effective”. These were the words of Antoni Esteve, President of Farmaindustria, during the opening session of the IMI-2 Info Day, held in Barcelona. The gathering, organized by FARMAINDUSTRIA and the Spanish Technology Platform for Innovative Medicines, ultimately aims at fostering the participation of companies and Spanish Centres in the most important public-private collaboration initiative in healthcare, with the highest budget in Europe.

The Innovative Medicines Initiative IMI-2 started up in July 2014 within the Framework Programme Horizon 2020. It entails a collaboration between the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) which is born after the success of its predecessor, IMI, which aimed at promoting the development of new treatments, especially in those therapeutic areas for which there was a lack of healthcare attention, or those with a high prevalence in current society. In this occasion, IMI-2 has a budget of 3,274 million € up to December 31st 2024, aimed at boosting projects in areas such as neurodegenerative pathologies, immune diseases, or metabolic disorders.

Antoni Esteve believes that this initiative has allowed for the cooperation between relevant stakeholders in the fields of research and healthcare innovation to become more closely knitted. In this regard, he assured that “the collaboration between the pharmaceutical industry and other interested Agents in the European Union has increased in designing global research plans and coordinating horizontal policies”.

Specifically, one of the most important novelties which is being introduced by IMI-2 is trying to widen the range of possible partners in this initiative to other industrial sectors, such as healthcare technologies, medical IT, diagnoses devices or animal healthcare.

For all these above reasons, the President of Farmaindustria remarked that it is necessary to take advantage of all opportunities which are offered “in order to guarantee that biomedical research keeps on being a role model for Spanish research, moreover in this new period where there is a slight glimpse of economic recovery”

Farmaindustria and the Spanish Technology Platform for Innovative Medicines are committed in the public dissemination and promotion of the Innovative Medicines Initiative and have been since it started. According to Esteve, the Association he presides has always pursued to increase the Spanish participation from the public and private sectors in IMI consortia, since it considered that the participation in these types of activities brings important returns to the country.

All presentations used at the Info Day are to be found here.