09 Mar. 2012 posted by EuroBioForum
DIRECT (“DIabetes REsearCh for patient straTification”), a consortium funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), announced the launch of a 45 million Euro project focusing on a stratification of patients with diabetes. Scientists and clinicians working in academia have joined forces with the pharmaceutical industry to tackle the current bottlenecks in diabetes drug development and to develop a personalized medicines approach to treatment of ‘type 2 diabetes’ (T2D) with either existing or novel therapies.
Leading European experts from 21 academic institutions and four pharmaceutical research organizations officially launched the DIRECT project on February 1st. The project is supported by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a unique Public Private Partnership (PPP) between European Union and the pharmaceutical industry (represented by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations/EFPIA). The EU contributes to this PPP a total of one billion Euro over ten years, which is matched in-kind by the EFPIA member companies.