Background information
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the long-term lending institution of the European Union owned by its Member States. It provides long-term financing for sound investments that contribute to EU policy. The Bank finances projects in four priority areas: infrastructure, innovation, climate and environment, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Between 2019 and 2021, the EIB Group provided more than €36 billion in financing for projects in Italy.
Under Horizon 2020, the EU research and innovation framework programme for 2014-2020, the Infectious Diseases Finance Facility (IDFF) provides financial products ranging from standard debt to equity-type financing for amounts typically between €7.5 million and €75 million to innovative players active in developing innovative vaccines, drugs, medical and diagnostic devices or novel research infrastructure for combating infectious diseases. Project costs may include clinical trial costs, set-up of commercialisation such as market access, development of prototypes or industrial roll-out of novel equipment, pre-clinical R&D costs and working capital requirements. This facility is delivered directly by the EIB, which has so far provided €479.5 million under the InnovFin IDFF.
The IRBM Group is an innovative research and manufacturing organisation working across all aspects of drug discovery and early development. IRBM fosters collaborations with organisations from the pharmaceutical, biotech, non-profit and academic sectors to accelerate the development of vaccines and medicines. About 250 scientists work at IRBM’s state-of-the-art R&D facility near Rome where projects are carried out “under one roof” enabling rapid cycle times and close integration of the scientific teams. IRBM’s scientists have discovered several marketed therapeutics, and more than 25 molecules have progressed into clinical testing.
The group’s cGMP facility company is Advent, which is authorised to develop and manufacture investigational lots of adenovirus-based vaccines has a 100% track record for clinical lot approval. Many of the clinical lots have been manufactured for use in clinical trials for infectious diseases including coronavirus, and Ebola. For more information, please visit www.irbm.com
Press contacts
Lorenzo Squintani, l.squintani@eib.org, tel.: +352 4379 82528, mobile: +352 691 285 772
Website: www.eib.org/press — Press Office: +352 4379 21000 press@eib.org
Heidi Kingdon Jones, h.kingdon@irbm.com, tel: +39 06 91093692, mobile: +39 348 2305378
Email: mediarelations@irbm.com