Roch Doliveux named chair of IMI

UCB's chief executive Roch Doliveux has been appointed chair of the Innovative Medicines Initiative's (IMI) governing board.

He has served as a board member since May 2010 and also sits on the board of one of IMI's founding partners the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).

Doliveux said: "The biopharmaceutical industry has reached an inflection point where public-private partnerships, bringing academic and industry knowledge together, are paving the way to better respond to new healthcare needs and bring safer, more efficacious and cost-effective treatments to patients.

“EFPIA considers IMI as a key instrument to implement the new business models which will ensure the sustainability of the pharmaceutical industry and increase the wellbeing of patients across Europe.''

As chair, Doliveux "will be in a unique position to move forward his vision for the future of the pharmaceutical industry based on open innovation and precompetitive research", IMI's executive director Michel Goldman said.

"The early achievements of the on-going IMI projects demonstrate that this new model based on public-private partnership is already successful".

The IMI currently funds 30 projects with a combined budget of around €600m covering drug safety and efficacy, knowledge management, and education/training.

This week it unveiled plans for European pharma companies to make 300,000 compounds from their in-house libraries available to academic researchers as part of a €169m scheme.

The IMI was set up in 2010 as a public-private partnership between the European Union (EU) and European industry organisation EFPIA, with the aim of speeding the discovery and development of new medicines.