bioMérieux will be awarded up to €54.5 million by France’s Agence de l’Innovation Industrielle to pursue molecular biology research

24 November, 2006

bioMérieux today announced that it will be awarded up to €54.5 million over the next ten years by France’s Agence de l’Innovation Industrielle to help fund the “Advanced Diagnostics and New therapeutic Approaches” (ADNA) program, led by Mérieux Alliance. Of this amount, €25.6 million will be in the form of grants and €28.9 million in the form of loans. The financing is subject to approval by the European Union, which is expected to make a decision in the second quarter of 2007.

“Innovation has always been at the heart of our strategy,” said Stéphane Bancel, the group’s Deputy Director. “The agency’s substantial aid will contribute to the development of new diagnostic products, especially for infectious diseases and cancer. It will support our ambitious project to pursue value-added molecular biology research, which bioMérieux would not have been able to do alone.”

The ADNA program aims to develop personalized medical solutions for cancer, infectious diseases and rare genetic diseases. Four strategically aligned partners, bioMérieux, Généthon, GenoSafe® and Transgene, have teamed up to meet the challenge. An initial partnership between bioMérieux and Ipsen in oncology research has given the project an additional boost.

Over the next ten years, the assistance provided by the agency will help finance programs designed to:

  • Find, identify and validate biomarkers. The identification of biomarkers will help scientists to develop diagnostic tests for earlier disease detection, determine appropriate treatments and monitor treatment response in patients.
  • Develop new molecular diagnostic platforms to perform high-value-added analyses of infectious diseases and certain types of cancer.

Focusing on patients and their illnesses, the ADNA program will address a number of major public health and healthcare cost issues.

Pioneering diagnostics