The European Commission funds through Horizon 2020, the EU research and innovation programme, up to €45 million of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) fast track call for research proposals in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. A commitment of a similar scale is expected from the pharmaceutical industry so that the total investment could reach up to €90 million.

The IMI call invites proposals for projects to develop treatments and diagnostics to better tackle the COVID-19 outbreak and to increase preparedness for potential future outbreaks.

This call comes as part of the coordinated EU response to the public health threat of COVID-19, hand in hand with the emergency research funding mobilised recently under Horizon 2020. The special call for expression of interest was launched on January 30 with a budget of €10 million. In the coming weeks, the selected projects will start their work to advance the knowledge on COVID-19 and its impact on infected people, with the aim of contributing to an efficient patient management and/or public health preparedness and response.

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract. The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the pharmaceutical industry represented by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).

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