Prioritisation and risk evaluation of medicines in the environment (PREMIER)

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) project ‘Prioritisation and risk evaluation of medicines in the environment’ (PREMIER) aims to develop a centralised, user-friendly and transparent digital assessment system accessible for all relevant stakeholders such as regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical industry, water managers and environmental non-governmental organisations. Furthermore, PREMIER will explore the options to incorporate environment considerations earlier in the drug development process to inform drug design and to reduce the need of animal testing.

The project will identify potential impacts and mitigation strategies to minimise the environmental impact of medicines. Alongside the models and tools, PREMIER will develop manuals and guidance for exploiting the generated knowledge. The developed products could be adopted by national and international agencies, and used as a central resource by stakeholders to manage the environmental risks of human medicinal products across their lifecycle. PREMIER also aims at facilitating the access to data and tools for the general public, regulators, environmental organisations and policy makers.

ECT is involved in this project as partner. Together with the industry representative from AstraZeneca, Anja Coors as representative of ECT is leading the work package that is devoted to generating experimental data for about 25 high-priority pharmaceuticals identified as case study compounds in PREMIER. In addition, ECT contributes to other work packages by supporting the development of the digital assessment system for medicines in the environment, the integrated decision trees, the preparation of guidance, and the environmental risk assessment of the case study pharmaceuticals.

PREMIER is funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 875508. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA.

For more information, see the project website and the IMI website.