Emmanuel Macron unveiled Tuesday a list of sixteen new biomedical research centers in France, part of the Health Innovation 2030 plan, aimed at strengthening the international attractiveness of the France in this field. "It is out of age to oppose public and private (...) We see that faced with the logic of silos, the time has come to work on a more unified biomedical research, better endowed, "said the President of the Republic during a visit to the premises of the Institut Curie in Saint-Cloud. Emmanuel Macron announced the labeling of twelve new university hospital institutes (IHU), in addition to the seven already existing, and four new "bioclusters", large research sites associating public and private, which will be added to a first biocluster on oncology, created in recent years in Saclay.
These newly labelled centres of excellence are scattered throughout the France, from Villejuif to Bordeaux, via Garches, Lyon and Marseille. The Institut Curie is notably on the list of IHU laureates. The latter are specifically dedicated to subjects as diverse as gerontology, in Toulouse, women's cancers, at Institut Curie in Paris, or cerebrovascular diseases, in Bordeaux, for example. The stated objective is to bring together the various health skills - i.e. care, research and innovation - within centres of excellence to enable the development of integrated health research projects to "improve the health of patients, the organization of care and the health system".
The "world's best scientists"
In parallel, a call for projects will be launched in a few days to offer teams including among the "best scientists in the world" funding over a period of five years to conduct research programs in France, via the creation of "fifty chairs of excellence" in biology and health, added Emmanuel Macron, adding that he wanted to make "up to two million euros" available to each of these chairs.
The Health Innovation 2030 plan, the health version of the "France 2030" plan, has a total budget of €7.5 billion. Of this amount, more than one billion will be devoted to research and other programs of excellence will be launched soon, announced the head of state.