The Innovative Medicines Initiative neurodegeneration portfolio: From individual projects to collaborative networks

Abstract

The IMI public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) was launched in 2008 with an initial budget of €2 billion. Aiming to accelerate the development of innovative medicines for areas of unmet clinical need, the IMI has committed over €380 million to projects on neurodegenerative disorders (NDD), catalyzing public-private collaborations at scale and at all stages of the R&D pipeline. Because of this vast investment, research on neurodegenerative diseases has made enormous strides in recent decades. The challenge for the future however remains to utilize this newly found knowledge and generated assets to develop better tools and novel therapeutic strategies. Here, we report the results of an integrated programme analysis of the IMI NDD portfolio, performed by the Neuronet Coordination and Support Action. Neuronet was launched by the IMI in 2019 to boost synergies and collaboration between projects in the IMI NDD portfolio, to increase the impact and visibility of research, and to facilitate interactions with related initiatives worldwide. Our analysis assessed the characteristics, structure and assets of the project portfolio and identifies lessons from projects spanning preclinical research to applied clinical studies and beyond. Evaluation of project parameters and network analyses of project partners revealed a complex web of 236 partnering organizations, with EFPIA partners often acting as connecting nodes across projects, and with a great diversity of academic institutions. Organizations in the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands were highly represented in the portfolio, which has a strong focus on clinical research in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease in particular. Based on surveys and unstructured interviews with NDD research leaders, we identified actions to enhance collaboration between project partners, by improving the structure and definition of in-kind contributions; reducing administrative burdens; and enhancing the exploitation of outcomes from research investments by EU taxpayers and EFPIA. These recommendations could help increase the efficiency and impact of future public-private partnerships on neurodegeneration.

Keywords: IMI; collaboration; neurodegeneration; public-private partnership; research policy.

Figure 1

IMI neurodegenerative disease portfolio characteristics. A set of project parameters was collected for 18 projects in the IMI Neurodegenerative disease (NDD) portfolio from sources including EU databases, project websites and descriptions of work. (A) Total funding contributions for the IMI NDD portfolio, by source and amount. (B) Disease areas targeted by IMI NDD projects; number of projects. (C) Types of partner organisations in IMI NDD projects; number of organisations, by category. (D) Countries of partner organisations; by country.

Figure 2

Network of unique partner organisations in the IMI NDD portfolio. (A) Network including EFPIA organisations. (B) Network excluding EFPIA organisations. Each organisation is represented by a single node, the size of which reflects how well-connected the organisation is with all the other organisations in the network (Betweenness Centrality). Lines connecting nodes are coloured according to the number of projects that connect individual organisations. Pink lines: participation in a single project. Blue lines: participation in 2 or more projects.

Figure 3

Network of shared organisations in IMI NDD projects. Each node in the network represents an IMI project. The lines between the nodes are weighted to show the number of organisations that participate in both projects – the wider the connector, the higher the number of shared organisations between projects.

Figure 4

Challenges and opportunities for improvement across the IMI project lifespan.