The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) has approved a 9.7 million euro project to contribute to a sustainable future by proactively managing the environmental impact of medicines. Lead by Radboud University Nijmegen and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca AB Ltd., PREMIER aims to deliver a framework for assessing and characterising the environmental risks of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs). 25 partners from the public and private sectors will collaborate in the next 6 years to explore the options to incorporate environmental considerations earlier in the drug development process to steer the development of medicines in a greener direction.
The project will initially focus on the design of a novel information and assessment system for identifying and addressing environmental risks of medicines, especially for those with limited data availability. Ultimately, this project will support the establishment of a new European standard for environmental protection and reassuring patients and the society at large that medicines are increasingly safe for the environment.
IMI is the world’s biggest public-private partnership (PPP) in the life sciences. It is a partnership between the European Union (represented by the European Commission) and the European pharmaceutical industry (represented by EFPIA, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations).
