Presentation of the Spanish Technology Platform for Innovative Medicines

Last 6th of July the Spanish Technology Platform for Innovative Medicines was presented at the Research Unit on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB) of IMIM/UPF premises in Barcelona. This initiative is managed by researchers and members of the pharmaceutical industry from all Spain, and promoted among others by Dr. Ferran Sanz (Head of the GRIB), Farmaindustria, LEIA Foundation, Zeltia and the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).

The Spanish Platform is born as a mirror of the European Technology Platform for Innovative Medicines, created in October 2004 in order to strengthen the European competitiveness in the development of safe and effective medicines, aiming to bring tangible benefits to patients and to revitalize the European biopharmaceutical research environment.

Nowadays, Europe has lost its lead as a global centre for biomedical research. Despite a five-fold increase in the Pharmaceutical trade surplus over the last 5 years, investment in R&D is declining notably in comparison with the US. The objective of the Spanish and the European Technology Platforms for Innovative Medicines is to foster public-private partnerships between all the relevant stakeholders (from academia, industry, regulatory agencies, patient groups, etc.) to implement the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) and to identify the main barriers to innovation in biomedical research.

The main four areas of this Strategic Research Agenda will be:

• Safety: Addressing predictive toxicology and risk assessment
• Efficacy: Addressing predictive pharmacology, biomarkers identification and validation,patient recruitment and risk assessment
• Knowledge Management: Leveraging the potential of new technologies to analyse a huge amount of information in an integrative and predictive way
• Education and Training: Addressing gaps in expertise needed to change and support the biopharmaceutical research and development process

The next step will be to work with the authorities on how to implement the recommendations of the Strategic Research Agenda.

More info can be found on the website at: http://www.medicamentosinnovadores.org