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Detecting in advance research that could generate disruptive and high-impact innovations and providing decisive support to the teams who take them on: this is the objective of the Health Impact program supported by Inserm. Funded by France 2030, it is allocated 30 million euros for its first year. Four first projects capable of transforming medical practices and improving human health have been selected by Inserm in fields as varied as immunology, food safety, neuroscience and respiratory physiology.
Risk research in health covers all fundamental or applied research which could generate strategic breakthroughs for France in the decades to come, whether conceptual, technological or methodological.
It is in this context that the Health Impact program was launched on May 2, 2024, coordinated by Inserm, in conjunction with all biomedical research stakeholders. The Institute is today presenting the first four selected projects.
The EvoCure project is led by Enzo Poirier, Inserm researcher in the Immunity and Cancer unit (Inserm/Institut Curie). He studies the conservation and diversification during evolution of certain immune proteins between species, ranging from bacteria to humans. Indeed, certain immune proteins present in bacteria are still found today in eukaryotic organisms[1]and play an immune role in them. Thanks to the analysis of the bacterial immune system coupled with cutting-edge genomic technologies, the objective of EvoCure is to discover new immune proteins in eukaryotes – and in particular in humans – in order to identify new opportunities. therapeutics.
The FoodContact project is led by Mathilde Touvier, Inserm research director at the Epidemiology and Statistics Research Center (Cress-Eren, Inserm/INRAE/Université Sorbonne Paris Nord/Université Paris-Cité). He is interested in the impact on human health of more than 12,000 chemical compounds contained in food packaging and likely to come into contact with food. Thanks to data from the French NutriNet-Santé cohort (which includes more than 179,000 participants), coupled with toxicological and physiological analyses, the project aims to identify substances, quantify them in foods and examine their potential toxicity and links to chronic disease risks for consumers. The results of these in-depth assessments could play a role in the evolution of packaging regulations.
The Nautilus project is led by Viktor Jirsa, CNRS research director at the Institute of Systems Neuroscience (Inserm/Aix-Marseille University). It is structured around the development of a technological platform capable of generating a digital double (or twin) of the brain of patients suffering from cerebral diseases, in order to evaluate its response to treatment by localized electrostimulation (today used to treat epilepsy, depression, or even Parkinson’s disease). The objective is to be able to predict the specific reaction of the brain of each patient, to finely adjust the intervention and to limit invasive surgical procedures as much as possible. This innovative tool could thus revolutionize the treatment of brain diseases by allowing personalized, high-precision and non-invasive therapeutic intervention.
The “Voluntary control of breathing: diving into apnea” project is led by Clément Menuet, Inserm researcher at the Institute of Neurobiology of the Mediterranean (Inserm/Aix-Marseille University). This so-called “exploration” project focuses on the identification of neurons involved in the voluntary control of breathing, the only vital physiological function that we can control voluntarily. By focusing on neural networks which intervene in particular in the context of voluntary apnea, the project aims to highlight new potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of respiratory and/or neurological disorders.
« With the Health Impact program, Inserm places risky research among its strategic challenges and strengthens its capacity to initiate and drive new research, declares Professor Didier Samuel, President and CEO of Inserm. This program reflects a paradigm shift for the Institute in the way it selects, finances and supports innovative research projects, but also detects, over time, new projects with high potential and breakthroughs. . The opening of Impact Santé to the entire biomedical research community also strengthens the role of Inserm in its mission of national coordination in the service of the health of all. »
[1] Eukaryotes represent a domain of life which brings together all organisms whose cell(s) are characterized by the presence of a nucleus: animals, fungi and plants.
