The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) has launched the last calls for proposals under the IMI2 programme, with topics on tackling cancer through artificial intelligence, antimicrobial resistance, neurodegenerative diseases, rare disease diagnosis, the return of clinical trial data to participants, and patient adherence.
IMI will contribute a total of EUR 59 million to the projects funded under the calls; these funds come from Horizon 2020 and will support the participation in the projects of organisations such as universities, small and medium-sized enterprises, and patient groups. EFPIA companies and IMI Associated Partners will contribute EUR 47 million.
Topic 4 of Call 23, on using artificial intelligence to select the best cancer treatment, is of particular interest to the biomedical imaging community. Advances in research mean that for many cancers, there are more treatment options than ever. Physicians face a growing number of potential therapeutic options, each of which needs to be understood and adopted effectively to ensure each patient receives the right treatment. The goal of this topic is to develop a treatment decision support tool with AI technologies to support decision making and research for cancer. The topic focuses on breast, lung and prostate cancer as there are large numbers of patients, a high unmet medical need, and a rapidly evolving treatment environment. However, it should be possible to apply the project outputs to other cancers afterwards.