Public private partnerships

Lygature: Pioneering Medicine Together

CTMM and TI Pharma, the two largest public-private top institutes in the Dutch top sector Life Sciences & Health, have joined forces and will continue as Lygature as of January 1, 2016. The new website that reflects Lygature’s character went live early November.

Lygature drives the development of new medical solutions for patients by managing public-private partnerships (PPPs). A key ingredient of successful PPPs is an independent third party that builds trust, provides governance and transcends barriers. This is exactly where Lygature comes in.


Innovation in health increasingly depends on cooperative ventures between public organizations, authorities and private enterprises. The sheer complexity of public-private partnerships can often jeopardize very desirable R&D programs, and Lygature addresses this complexity. Our people are highly skilled professionals with experience in academic and industrial settings, regulatory affairs, data infrastructure, (scientific) communication and more. They add scientific rigor, built trust and ensure that all parties remain focused on the ultimate goal of the partnership: developing effective medical solutions for patients.

With Lygature, the Dutch sector is bundling its strengths in the areas of medicines and medical technology, building on the legacy of two organizations with strong track records in molecular diagnostics (Center for Translational Molecular Medicine) and drug development (Top Institute Pharma). As a larger player, the combined organization will be able to operate more effectively at both a national and a European level. 


Jan Raaijmakers:

‘One of the ambitions of the top sector Life Sciences & Health is to sustain the expertise that has been built up in the top institutes to the sector’s benefit in the future. This ambition is being realized through the bundling of the strengths of CTMM and TI Pharma. The merger therefore represents a significant gain for innovation in Dutch medical science.’

Successful previous three rounds result in a continuation of the programme.

In the previous Health~Holland Update of September, the third round of the ZonMw programme Enabling Technologies Hotels was announced. We are pleased to inform you that the programme will be continued in 2016/2017. ZonMw and NWO Earth and Life Sciences (ALW) are providing funds for the continuation, which is supported by the Top Sectors Agri&Food, Horticulture & Starting Materials and Life Sciences & Health.

The Technology Hotel concept enables researchers (the guests) who do not have access to high-end technologies to obtain access to these technologies and the connected expertise and infrastructure via a service-oriented facility (the Hotel).The programme is performed in close collaboration with the Dutch Techcentre for Life Sciences (DTL). The Technology Hotels are listed on the DTL website. These DTL-associated Technology Hotels give external researchers access to state-of-the-art infrastructure and related expertise.

The Enabling Technologies Hotels programme has already shown its popularity. A total of 54 projects were submitted for the third round of the programme. These projects are currently being evaluated and the granting decision is expected by February 2016. The total budget is 780,000 euros and the ZonMw programme team expects that a success rate of about 50% can be reached, similar to the 2nd round.

Lygature, the merged CTMM-TI Pharma organization, coordinates the ADAPT-SMART project which has started as part of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI-2) in September 2015. Building upon the Escher platform for regulatory innovation and its independent positioning, Lygature has been asked by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to take up this leading role.

ADAPT SMART is an enabling platform for the coordination of Medicines Adaptive Pathways to Patients (MAPPs) activities. MAPPs seek to foster access to beneficial treatments for the right patient groups at the earliest appropriate time in the product life-span in a sustainable fashion.

The concept of adaptive pathways has been introduced by the EMA in a pilot in 2014. Adaptive pathways foresees either an initial approval in a well-defined patient subgroup with a high medical need and subsequent widening of the indication to a larger patient population, or an early regulatory approval (e.g. conditional approval) which is prospectively planned, and where uncertainty is reduced through the collection of post-approval data on the medicine's use in patients.

This approach is particularly relevant for medicines with the potential to treat serious conditions with an unmet medical need, and may reduce the time to a medicine's approval and to its reimbursement for targeted patient groups. It involves balancing the importance of timely patient access with the need for adequate, evolving information on a medicine's benefits and risks.

ADAPT SMART will support IMI-2 projects investigating MAPPs tools and methodologies, and engage in a dialogue with all relevant stakeholders to prove and develop workable MAPPs concepts.

The ADAPT SMART consortium aims to facilitate and accelerate the availability of MAPPs to all healthcare stakeholders. It will:

  1. Distribute findings, key discoveries and case studies from ongoing or completed MAPPs pilot projects, creating a MAPPs repository of knowledge and opportunities
  2. Identify the scientific challenges and opportunities related to the implementation of MAPPs and foster the aligned understanding of consortium members and their constituents
  3. Support new IMI2 research and innovation actions by facilitating the inclusion of MAPPs enablers, tools and methodologies to address its challenges and opportunities
  4. Conduct horizon scanning and research on key topics to produce actionable advice and recommendations for IMI and other stakeholders to further the broad implementation and adoption of MAPPs

32 participants encompassing all parts of the healthcare ecosystem are represented in ADAPT SMART, including patient organizations, academia, regulators, HTA bodies, payers and industry. ADAPT SMART will centre its initial work on four key work packages (WP):

  • WP1 Evidence generation throughout the entire product life cycle
  • WP2 Designing the MAPPs pathway
  • WP3 Decision-making, sustainability and their implications
  • WP4 Project management