English

Leem Recherche : A joint association at the service of innovation in healthcare

Leem Recherche is a joint association between the public research organizations involved in human health and the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Its objectives are promoting research and therapeutic progress that are consistent with the objectives of the European research policy. Leem Recherche acts in particular to facilitate the research partnerships between the public and private spheres. Leem Recherche participates in colloquia and organizes seminars to facilitate exchanges and the sharing of information.
To promote research and therapeutic progress that are consistent with the objectives of the European research policy, Leem Recherche holds the objectives of facilitating public/private research partnerships, of putting forward the issues of therapeutic research and of measuring competitiveness, in order to create a more favorable environment in France. The shared propositions and the initiatives taken up jointly make it possible to lend the necessary visibility to the development of this research that is directly related to health and human diseases. Currently, the project based approaches – multidisciplinary, regional, national, pan-European – involve a multiplicity of players and research platforms. The performance of players also depends on their organization and on their coordination. In the current context in which the public authorities are seeking to improve France’s competitiveness through the creation of competitiveness clusters and that of National Research Agency, Leem Recherche becomes a crossroads of necessary exchanges, making the integration of public and private research spheres possible. Therapeutic innovation is a continuous chain that runs from discoveries to the health care system. Leem Recherche unites all the players involved in making therapeutic progress in an association in order to establish this essential link for development that becomes the driver of such progress.

Presided over by Christian Jajoux, this association is endowed with a Board of Directors and a Joint Scientific Board. The Scientific Board, the operational arm of Leem Recherche, is presided over by Professor Antoine Bril; Catherine Lassale, Secretary general and Scientific and Medical Director of Leem, sees to the organization. Leem Recherche brings together the research organizations, the administrations concerned, and the public and private researchers involved in basic research and clinical research, with the 38 pharmaceutical companies that have an R&D organization in France. The association is also the birthing grounds for discussion and studies by experts from the academic and industrial fields.

This sharing of ideas and knowledge is at the basis of the recommendations and propositions promoted by Leem Recherche. In this respect, the association participates in colloquia and organizes seminars to facilitate exchanges and the sharing of information.

Activities : Developing dialogue and partnerships

Launch of 1st directory of R&D centers of pharmaceutical companies

In order to facilitate contact and to allow public laboratories to identify the representatives likely to interest them, the pharmaceutical companies created a first directory of all the research and development centers located in France. Regularly updated and easily consulted by company, by discipline or by therapeutic field, the directory can be accessed on the web site of Leem Recherche. Given the success of this initiative, Leem Recherche has released a first version of the directory, a copy of which is attached to this dossier. Others can be provided upon request to Leem Recherche.

Post-doctoral fellowships organized by subject

Each year Leem Recherche awards six post-doctoral fellowships of 24 000 euros, in order to finance a one-year training program. It is possible to renew this fellowship once. The subject selected for 2008 is the identification and/or the validation of diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. The practical details and the application dossiers are avalaible on the french version of this web site.

The Leem Recherche Summer School : The François-Hyafil workshops

This Summer School trains forty research scientists each year from the public research sector in various aspects of R&D in the pharmaceutical industry, to facilitate dialogue between public and private research.
Organised in collaboration with the Inserm (the French national medical research council), the Leem Recherche Summer School is one of courses offered by our partner, the Inserm School.
The programme for this year’s workshop, which was held from 5 to 7 September 2007, focussed on preclinical development, including the identification of candidate molecules and drug safety, using oncology as an example. This programme was specially designed to enable academic research scientists to gain a better understanding of the complexity involved in developing new medicinal products.
This course, which includes presentations, workshops and numerous debates, ends with a visit to a research centre. In 2007, the Leem Recherche pupils visited the sanofi-aventis Vitry site. (Summary of assessment – summer school 2007)

This school curriculum is regularly repeated and adapted to meet the expectations of our partners.

Scientific conferences

These themed conferences, proposed by Leem Recherche all over France, are an opportunity to present scientific and therapeutic advances, achieved notably as a result of public-private partnerships, and to consider future prospects.

Following on from the Marseilles conference on rare diseases held last June 2007 (see the Leem Recherche newsletter n°4), the second conference has been held in Angers in October 2007. On the invitation of Hugues Gascan, Director of the IFR132 research institute, the Leem Recherche scientific conference on monoclonal antibodies was attended by about a hundred young research scientists. Are these antibodies just like any other medicinal product? How are they developed? How are they produced on a large scale? Do they represent an advance in the treatment of patients?
Leem Recherche brought together the pharmacologist Gilles Paintaud from the University of Tours, Rémi Urbain from the pharmaceutical company LFB and Professor Jean-Paul Soulillou from the University of Nantes, to answer these questions.

The third scientific conference was organised in Strasbourg in March 2008 by Pr Jacques Haiech, vice President of the scientific board, and dedicated to biomedicines, from research to production.

The next conference will take place in Lille in September 2008.

The National Clinical Pharmacology Workshop in Giens

These national workshops (Rencontres nationales de pharmacologie clinique de Giens) are held annually in the autumn on the Giens peninsula. (see the special Leem Recherche Newsletter)
They are held under the patronage of the Inserm (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale), the French Health Products Safety Agency (the Afssaps), the Paris hospitals (AP-HP - Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris), the national health insurance fund for salaried workers (the Cnamts - Caisse Nationale d’Assurance Maladie des Travailleurs Salariés) and the Directorate-General of Health (the DGS - Direction générale de la santé), the French Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics (the SFPT - Société Française de Pharmacologie et de Thérapeutique), the Federation of French Hospitals (FHF- Fédération Hospitalière de France) and Leem Recherche, with the support of the Marseilles hospitals (the AP-HM - Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille). These workshops alternate between round-table discussions and plenary conferences. The aim of each round-table is to move forward the debate on a current problem in the field of clinical development, evaluation and use of medicinal products, sometimes including medical devices, and to propose what action to take.
The national clinical pharmacology workshop is not a conference and participation is only possible by named invitation. As the purpose of the workshop is to allow experts to exchange experiences, every participant has to attend the entire meeting. Each round-table is chaired by two moderators, one from academia and one from industry, under the responsibility of a coordinator.

A platform for studies, deliberation and proposals

Innovation Healthcare 2015, A plea for life sciences

A new medicine is being born before our eyes, one which puts the patient at the centre of the medical view, based on understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying diseases, guided by diagnostic and imaging techniques which would have been unimaginable even last century, and enriched by the new possibilities offered by biotechnology, genomics, imaging, nanotechnology and cellular and gene therapy. France cannot let the therapeutic revolution foreseeable between now and 2015 pass it by. In April 2007, during the presidential campaign, Leem Recherche launched an appeal called INNOVATION HEALTHCARE 2015 in favour of life sciences, in order to increase the awareness of the future government about the ethical, medical, social, economic and financial issues that the extraordinary progress in science and medicine is already raising and will raise with even more force in the years to come.

The INNOVATION HEALTHCARE 2015 Forum on 10 October provided an opportunity for debates and proposals on the conditions for success in research and innovation in France, and for consideration of the future impact of this new medicine on those involved in the health sector and on society.

A PLEA FOR LIFE SCIENCES (In French) was drawn up under the auspices of the Scientific Board with the participation of many parties. Its aim is to draw attention to the scale of the challenges which concern the future of France and to the urgent need to respond ambitiously. After reviewing the current situation in the French research sector and broaching the major scientific and technological breakthroughs and their possible consequences, it then exposes the medical issues. It analyses the major bottlenecks, the priorities to consider and the main points on which efforts should be concentrated, and continues by proposing the basics of a plan of action.

Leem Recherche intends to continue in this way and hopes to establish a fruitful dialogue with the public authorities.

Alongside the comprehensive approach of INNOVATION HEALTHCARE 2015, Leem Recherche also works on precise themes, those where the challenges are greatest, and sets up specific think-tanks.

  • In 2007, Leem Recherche contributed to a study on the competitiveness and attractiveness of France in the field of cellular and tissue therapy, along with Leem’s biotechnology committee and the French ministry for research. (See also the Leem recherche Newsletter n°2)
  • The objectives of the Cancer group are to promote the visibility and competitiveness of French oncology teams and research and to facilitate public-private partnerships in non-competitive fields through concrete action, conducted jointly between industry, academia and institutions. Having prepared a charter about access to tumour banks with the INCa in 2006, the group is now devoting itself to translational research in oncology. A reference document has just been written. An international symposium is being prepared to promote French expertise in this field in September 2008.
  • The Alzheimer’s group acted immediately of course to contribute to the Alzheimer’s Plan requested by the French president.
  • A survey on France’s place in the very active area of international research in 2006 has revealed that although clinical research is being maintained at a good level, our preclinical research and translational research fall short of our ambitions.