UCB announced today that CEO Roch Doliveux has joined the Governing Board of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a public-private partnership between the European Union and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), of which UCB has been a member since its initiation in 2006.
The goal of the IMI is to improve the environment for biomedical research and development in Europe and to promote innovation through open collaboration. With its unique and innovative funding mechanism, IMI supports research to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. The European Commission contributes €1 billion to the IMI via its Seventh Framework Programme. This amount is matched by in-kind contributions of at least another €1 billion euro from EFPIA member companies.
“One of UCB’s strategies is ‘Partnering to increase value and efficiency’. This statement of belief is at the heart of the IMI,” says Roch Doliveux. “As a leading player in European biomedical research, and through our collaboration with the top-quality consortia established within IMI, we are working to improve the efficiency of the industry in bringing safe, efficacious, cost-effective treatments to patients. The collaborative programmes within IMI allow the partners to share pre-competitive data that support drug discovery efforts, bringing not just efficiencies, but also societal and socio-economic benefits.”
UCB is a significant contributor to the Innovative Medicines Initiative, and is participating in 10 of the 15 initial consortia within IMI. UCB is providing expert input on topics including neurodegenerative disorders, pain research, immunogenicity, predictive toxicology, pharmacovigilance, translational safety biomarkers, and strategies for treating Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, as well as a number of training programmes.
Beyond IMI, UCB is partnering widely with academic and industrial research organisations, to increase value and efficiency, and to stimulate innovation. UCB now has several hundred collaborative alliances, ranging from partnerships with European and US academic groups, to multiple industrial partnerships, and membership of major government-led consortia. Reflecting the location of UCB’s research ‘hubs’, the network of academic collaboration is most extensive in Belgium, Germany and the UK where UCB has over 150 partnerships with academic institutions.
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