Industrial partnership

As the main contact for industry, it aims to facilitate contacts, exchanges and projects involving academic research and the business world.
A converging development can be observed in private research, with the creation of Ariis (Association of research and innovation for the health industries).

Forging alliances: a need shared by academic research and industry

The swift scientific, technological and medical progress of the 1990s and first decade of the new millennium have changed the face of research and health. Public organizations and private industries must invent new ways in which to meet the challenges they face together:

• lengthening life expectancies,
• global access to prevention and treatment,
• anticipation and minimization of risk,
• new diagnostic and prognostic methods,
• development of biotherapies,
• personalized and regenerative medicine,
• telemedicine and e-medicine.

These changes call for new interaction procedures between academic research laboratories, industrial research laboratories and biotechnology firms.

Step up technology transfer: creating value for tomorrow

Transfer, along with the pooling, of knowledge and technologies is now acknowledged as being one of the key links for creating innovative value, which is closely tied in with the proof of concept stage.
The operational arrangements for transfer are varied and tailored to each objective:

• personnel exchanges between academic and industrial research;
• training programs at the public/private interface;
• stimulation of academic researcher consultancies with the industrial sector and manufacturers’ consultancies for academic proofs of concept;
• joint research programs, of variable scopes, from the most exploratory to the most finalized, with or without the option of operating the intellectual property produced;
• operating licenses;
• business startups.

In order to meet these requirements, professionalism will be further strengthened within technology transfer teams. A standing committee bringing together members of the Alliance and their promotion units has been set up, chaired by the “Health technologies” thematic multi-organization institute to forge and follow-up partnerships, interact with competitiveness clusters and provide scientific expertise.

Facilitate proof of concept: an essential, yet neglected stage

Innovation processes in the health field are long, risk-ridden and require relatively steep investment. Establishing the proof of concept in particular is a high-risk stage.
The proof of concept arising from a discovery takes shape when an ensemble of arguments increases trust in three regards:

• ensure the viability and effectiveness of a product or technology,
• prevent any toxicity for the future beneficiary,
• minimize the technological, commercial and financial risks.

Its demonstration is a specific procedure – supplementary to the research activity, which supposes knowledge of the scientific dimension (within the research team) and identification of the possible applications.
This early stage in the development of innovation has, for the most part, been sidelined in France by the various innovation stakeholders (public research, manufacturers and capital-risk firms), which partly explains the paradox in this country in biotechnologies: very high quality academic research but a technology transfer level that is clearly lagging behind.
Major and fresh financial investment will therefore be granted to facilitate this stage that is key to the democratization of biomedical innovations.

Visibility, appeal, responsiveness: Developing the three assets of academic research

Visibility, appeal and responsiveness should be the key words for the development of new academic research partnerships.

• Visibility: giving an overview of the national scientific scene through the thematic multi-organization institutes per major field and being able to mobilize the teams concerned.
• Appeal: facilitating research partnerships, joint projects combining scientific and technological proposals, new services, particularly in the field of epidemiology or clinical research.
• Responsiveness: taking simplification measures such as the widespread setup of single mandates, reduction in the number of co-owners, assistance with the development and professionalization of transfer units.