Our main motivation for establishing collaborative research projects with industry stems from the fact that, together, we are stronger. Both industry and academic research as well as patients benefit from successful public-private partnerships. We, at FIMM, with our key collaborators, are able to quickly provide answers to many problems that industry is currently not equipped to answer alone, and thereby accelerate product development. At best, this can mean getting a new medication or a diagnostic test to the market earlier for the benefit of the patients.
The collaborative projects advance FIMM’s strategic research programmes at multiple levels. They address the same key issues as our Grand Challenge programmes and have resulted in high-quality publications and large data resources, such as FinnGen. Our doctoral students and other researchers who work on industry-funded projects gain valuable experience and contacts that, in the future, can facilitate a possible career transition from academia to industry.
As an example of our efforts to build and intensify collaborations, we have organised a “FIMM meets Pharma event”, inviting local and international representatives of the pharmaceutical industry to FIMM. During the COVID-19 pandemic efforts to promote our existing collaborations and to establish new ones continued with “FIMM meets Pharma” webinars.
Thanks to these long-term efforts and relationship building, the magnitude of industrial collaboration projects and their impact on FIMM funding have been steadily increasing.