7 October 2016 - Board elects Grzegorz Cessak as vice-chair, adopts Agency’s mid-year report and signs off reflection paper on European medicines web portal

At its 6 October 2016 meeting in London, the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Management Board elected Grzegorz Cessak as vice-chair of the Board for a three-year period. Dr Grzegorz Cessak is President of Poland’s Office for registration of Medicinal Products, Medical Devices and Biocidal Products, a post he has held since July 2009. He has served as a member of EMA’s Management Board since January 2010. Dr Cessak steps into the role that was vacated by Christa Wirthumer-Hoche following her election as chair at the March 2016 Management Board meeting.

The Management Board heard an update on EMA’s activities in the first half of 2016. In human medicine, EMA’s new scheme to support the development of promising medicines addressing unmet medical needs (PRIME) has been successful so far; 48 applications were received between its launch on 7 March 2016 and the end of June and another approximately 70 applications have been received since mid-2016.

Overall, the number of new applications for marketing authorisation received in the first half of 2016 was comparable to that received during the same period in 2015 (42 in the first half 2016 versus 45 in the first half 2015).

Read EMA press release