Sign up for the IMI Stakeholder Forum 2016
Registration is open for the IMI Stakeholder Forum 2016, which will take place on Wednesday 28 and Thursday 29 September at the Hotel Crown Plaza - Le Palace in Brussels, Belgium.
Every year, the IMI Stakeholder Forum gathers IMI’s stakeholders in health and medicines R&D and provides them with an opportunity to learn about and discuss IMI's latest activities and plans and to network with one another. This year’s event runs over two days.
- Day 1 (Wednesday 28 September, afternoon only): Focus on IMI’s forthcoming Call for proposals, including an overview of the topics and advice for applicants. In the evening, participants are invited to the networking dinner.
- Day 2 (Thursday 29 September, all day): Four parallel workshops will give participants the opportunity to learn about and contribute to IMI’s future plans in these key strategic areas: biopreparedness, advanced therapies, oncology, and digital health.
Registration is free but obligatory. The deadline for registering for the Stakeholder Forum is 20 September.
IMI2 – Call 10 indicative topics – find out more
IMI’s next Call for proposals forms the focus of the first day of the Stakeholder Forum. IMI staff will briefly present the topics as well as IMI’s rules and procedures (including on intellectual property). The indicative topics for the Call are published online and are:
- Understanding hypoglycaemia: the underlying mechanisms and addressing clinical determinants as well as consequences for people with diabetes by combining databases from clinical trials
- How Big Data could support better diagnosis and treatment outcomes for Prostate Cancer
Note: topic forms part of the IMI Big Data for Better Outcomes (BD4BO) programme - Improving the care of patients suffering from acute or chronic pain
Note: this topic consists of three subtopics:
A : Using patient reported outcome measures to improve the management of acute and chronic pain (PROMs)
B : Improving the translatability of pharmacodynamic biomarkers in pain pathways of healthy subjects and preclinical species (BIOM)
C: Improving translation in chronic pelvic pain (PCC) - Creation of a pan-European paediatric clinical trials network
- Biomanufacturing 2020: Development of innovative high throughput analytical tools and methods to characterize cell culture fluid during development and commercial cell culture processes
- Unlocking the solute carrier gene-family for effective new therapies
- Enhanced patient voice in medicines lifecycle
- Precision medicines approaches in autism spectrum disorders
The day will finish with a networking drink and dinner where participants will have the opportunity to meet IMI staff and network with potential partners.
Meet the speakers!
The keynote lecture on day 1 of the event will be given by cancer expert Raju Kucherlapati, Paul C. Cabot Professor of Genetics and Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School.
Other confirmed speakers from the workshops on day 2 include:
Biopreparedness
- Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director-General - Health Systems and Innovation, World Health Organization (WHO)
- Michael Makanga, Executive Director, European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP)
- Herman Goossens, Professor of Microbiology, University of Antwerp
Advanced therapies
- Alain Fischer, Hôpital Necker, Paris
- Mimoun Azzouz, Director of Research & Innovation Department of Neuroscience, University of Sheffield
Digital Health
- Matthew Hotopf, NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, RADAR-CNS
Oncology
- Stefan J. Scherer, Vice-President Global Head Correlative Science, Novartis; Chair of the IMI Strategic Governing Group (SGG) Oncology
- Jan Geissler, Director of EUPATI, the European Patients Academy on Therapeutic Innovation
Spotlight on the biopreparedness workshop
Recent epidemics of existing and new diseases have emerged in different regions of the world, including not only the Ebola and Zika viruses, but also Dengue fever in Southern Europe and Yellow fever in Angola. The patterns of these phenomena are linked to a complex variety of factors, including climate change trends, vaccine supplies and uptake, and geopolitical challenges. A number of organisations have a role to play in tackling such public health emergencies. IMI is among these. But while programmes like IMI cannot fully respond to all of these issues, a public-private partnership could offer the advantages, flexibility and complementary assets to make a difference. The goal of this consultative workshop is to gather input from stakeholders involved in public health emergencies in order to ascertain whether a public-private supported platform could play a role, and if so – how, in selecting rapid approaches to treatment and intervention options.
This consultation workshop is jointly organised by IMI, the European Commission and EFPIA.
Spotlight on the advanced therapies workshop
New treatment approaches for diseases with high-unmet medical need include medicinal products based on genetic engineering, innovative cell-based therapies and tissue-engineered products. In the EU, these new therapies are commonly known as advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs). There are numerous factors that have complicated the translation from research into patient access. IMI, in collaboration with key stakeholders, has run a consultation on advanced therapies with the goal to identify the potential of IMI as a platform for enhancing ATMP research and development. The goal of this workshop is to assess the input collected in previous consultations, and draw conclusions to inform the development of an IMI ATMP portfolio of projects that could be launched from 2017 onwards.
Spotlight on the oncology workshop
This workshop is organised with the IMI Strategic Governing Group (SGG) Oncology, in order to better understand the current gaps in oncology research; to assess whether an IMI project would be considered the appropriate tool to address any of these gaps; to discuss, if an IMI Call was to focus on this topic, what would be the most appropriate and effective Call process and project strategies.
Spotlight on the digital health workshop
IMI has been focusing on digital health through its RADAR-CNS and WEB-RADR projects. This workshop aims to review what IMI has done in the digital area; what other partnerships such as the ECSEL Joint Undertaking are working on; discuss the use of digital technologies in medicines R&D; identify what patients, doctors, regulators, payers and HTA bodies expect from digital technologies; and assess what IMI could do to bridge any gaps in digital health research. Discussions will also address the question of data ownership, access and use.