The Innovative Medicines Inititative (IMI), the public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European pharmaceutical industry, has announced the topics for research for its second call for proposals.

Funding of €156.3 million will be made available, €76.8 million coming from the European Commission and €79.5 coming from EFPIA member companies.

The topics are as follows:

• Imaging biomarkers for anticancer drug development
• New tools for target validation to improve drug efficacy (oncology)
• Molecular biomarkers: accelerating cancer therapy development and refining patient care.
• Indentification and development of rapid point of care diagnostic tests for bacterial diagnosis to facilitate conduct of clinical trials and clinical practice
• Understanding aberrant adaptive immunity mechanisms
• Translational research in chronic immune-mediated disease: bridging between animal models and humans
• Drug/disease modelling: library & framework
• Open pharmacological space
• Electronic Health Records

The IMI has also announced the appointed of a new executive director, Professor Michel Goldman. Commenting on his appointment he said: "I am very please to be joining IMI at such an exciting moment in its development. On the basis of my previous experience in public-private partnerships, my first priority will be to strengthn the bridges between academia andindustry in the interest of patients."

CEO of Bayer Healthcare and President of EFPIA, Arthur J. Higgins commenting in a press release, said: "The IMI is a clear statement that Europe intends to be at the forefront of biopharmaceutical innovation. By accelerating and optimising R&D processes we are trying to remove bottlenecks in the drug development process...The greatest success of this initiative has been bringing together normally competing pharmaceutical companies with academic stakeholders in an unparalleled effort to accelerate the discovery of innovative medicines."