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NEWS

New IMI project “COMBINE” launched to accelerate the fight against antimicrobial resistance

COMBINE will support the coordination of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Accelerator Programme to progress a pipeline of medicines for the treatment or prevention of resistant bacterial infections.

Copenhagen, Denmark — December 3, 2019 — 11 European partners today announced that they are launching a new project, The Collaboration for Prevention and Treatment of Multi-Drug Resistant Bacterial Infections (COMBINE), under the IMI AMR Accelerator Programme. COMBINE will support projects in the AMR Accelerator with effective management, communication, and data capture capabilities, and carry out research to strengthen the scientific basis in the AMR field. COMBINE is funded by IMI, a joint initiative between the European Commission (EC) and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). COMBINE receives EUR 8 million from the EC; EFPIA in-kind contributions total EUR 17 million.

The AMR Accelerator is a Public-Private Partnership initiated by IMI. With a total budget of EUR 295 million, six consortia aim to progress a pipeline of potential medicines targeting tuberculosis (TB), nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. If successful, the projects in the AMR Accelerator are expected to deliver up to 10 new preclinical candidates and up to 5 ‘Phase II-ready’ compounds over a six-year period.

COMBINE will support the projects in the AMR Accelerator with effective management, and work to establish data management guidelines, improve and standardise animal infection models and facilitate optimised design for new clinical trials. To achieve these objectives, 11 partners with expertise in the field of antibiotic resistance from seven European countries have joined forces:  4 European academic partners (Uppsala University, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, Statens Serum Institut), 4 small and medium-sized enterprises (Asclepia, BIOCOM, grit42, BEAM Alliance) and 3 pharmaceutical companies (GSK, Evotec, Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V.). Their work will include the development of innovative methodology facilitating preclinical and clinical development through analyses of aggregated preclinical and clinical trial data and initiation of a database with protocols, reference strains and antibiotic compounds to be used for standardization of preclinical models.

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