This important Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is awarded a 30 Million Euro grant for research to develop methods to study the immune cells activities involved in immunotherapies to allow more patients to benefit from these treatments.
The introduction of immunotherapeutic drugs for the treatment of cancer and inflammatory disease, where the drugs encourage the body’s own immune system to attack the disease, have had a significant impact. However, the immunotherapies do not work for all patients. The Immune-image project has set out to develop methods to study the immune cells involved in such a treatment allowing selection of the right treatment for the right patient and at the right time. The information obtained about the immune cells and their activity during disease could be then be used to develop new drugs that might help those patients for which current immunotherapies are ineffective.
“We are very proud of being part of this important initiative in this rapidly evolving field of science – to use imaging methodology to elucidate immune-system activation in patients”, says Per Hagmar, SVP Oncology at Antaros Medical.
The Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (IMI2 JU) project ‘Immune-Image’ has been approved for funding and with an official start October 1st, 2019. Immune cells will be studied in vivo using non-invasive and clinically applicable high-end imaging techniques including Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Optical Imaging (OI) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).
Immune-Image brings together 10 top European academic institutions, 4 small-to-medium sized enterprises, 1 patient organization and 7 pharmaceutical companies. The expert scientists working at the partner organizations of Immune-Image will collaborate to develop new imaging techniques, new tracers, new methods, and to facilitate efficient development of drugs in the future in order to improve health care for the European Citizen and beyond.
Immune image press release
https://www.vumc.com/news-1/news-detail/immune-cells-in-the-spotlight.htm
For additional information: www.immune-image.eu and https://www.imi.europa.eu