Strasbourg, July 4th 2008 - Alsace BioValley announces today the construction of a new building dedicated to life sciences and housing a Center for Integrative Biology as well as a Platform Center serving research and industry. The project will be piloted by the Alsace Region and aims to provide on a single site a wide range of services, research and high value added expertise for the academic and industry community.
The initiative harnesses the synergies of two complementary projects. These are the Center for Integrated Biology (CBI) in Illkirch, under the leadership of Dino Mofras, head of the IGBMC (Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire), and the Platform Center (HdP), sponsored by the Alsace BioValley cluster. These two projects will be implemented simultaneously with shared costs and human resources, and be located near to the IGBMC.
One of the ideas driving the combined project is to bring together at an early stage researchers, the IGBMC, and the life sciences industry, with the support of local political leaders, to foster the creation of significant industry partnerships.
“What’s new about this project is the way it will build in Alsace a center of excellence combining services and very high level scientific expertise, thus helping to standardize, professionalize and organize the services required, which hitherto have existed only in academic labs,” said Nicolas Carboni, managing director of Alsace BioValley.
“The new building brings together all the advantages of Alsace - high level scientific research, strong political backing and a cluster whose role is to make individual initiatives work together to make the region more attractive,” said Pascal Neuville, president of Alsace BioValley. “Our goal in implementing this project is to encourage the creation of industry partnerships, in our region, with international players who are impressed with the go-getting Alsace attitude.”
The size of investment strengthens the role of Strasbourg, capital of the Alsace, as an international cluster in biology and healthcare. It is already implicated in many international programs and partnerships.
The new building of some 2795 sq m (28000 sq ft approx) will be constructed in the Illkirch Innovation Park close to the IGBMC.
It will be part of the 2007-2013 national regional project contracts. The overall budget is EUR 11 million including sales tax. Financing comes from the Alsace Region (EUR 2.84M) as well as from the State, the department of the Bas-Rhin and the Urban Community of Strasbourg. A request for funding will also be made to the European FEDER fund.
About the Alsace Biovalley(TM) cluster
The Alsace Biovalley cluster brings together and encourages the development and growth of public and private entities based in Alsace, France, and involved in life sciences and healthcare. The Alsace Biovalley cluster includes the main aid agencies which offer simplified and effective access to all the regional services and aid.
Among Alsace Biovalley’s missions are:
• Help industry in Alsace obtain finance and the services of a body designated by the French government as world-class competitive pole of development
• Make the Alsace region even more attractive by accelerating the connections between industry, research and regional and national aid bodies
• Offer different products and services to the companies and laboratories in the area, including help with projects, search for partners, company incubators, enterprise creation, international expansion, economic intelligence, communication tools and scientific and market information
• Ensure that the region has a world-class infrastructure in place including specialized buildings, scientific service platforms, logistics, and shared services
• Offer an entry point to Biovalley, the single tri-national network of excellence made up of Alsace (France), the Basel region (Switzerland) and Fribourg (Germany).
Situated as it is in the heart of Europe, and hosting 200 companies, 60 laboratories and 15,000 employees, Alsace Biovalley believes it is a real catalyst and one of the largest European clusters for life science and healthcare.
About the IGBMC
The Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire holds an outstanding position in the French biological and medical world. It has a unique structure and a worldwide reputation for its research. It is a laboratory which combines resources from the CNRS, Inserm and the University of Louis Pasteur.
RESEARCH FIELDS
The IGBMC carries out research in a very wide range of disciplines and methodologies - from structural biology and bioinformatics to molecular and cellular biology, from physiology (development and neurobiology) to human genetics and model organisms such as nematodes, fruit-flies, and mice.
Organized in five departments, the IGBMC is dedicated to the monitoring of gene expression in the genomes of multicellular organisms, from the nematode to the mouse and to humans, and to the analysis of the function of genes and protein associated with physiological and pathological processes. It is heavily involved in biomedical science in cancer, metabolic disease (diabetes, obesity), neurodegenerative disease and mechanisms linked to drug abuse as well as monogenic genetic disease.
