It’s official. The reConnect University Hospital Institute (IHU) was inaugurated on November 4, in Paris, on the premises of the Institut Pasteur. It is the first IHU dedicated to hearing and brain sciences. It displays the ambition to move from compensatory medicine to restorative medicine, as Professor Anne-Lise Giraud, its director, recalled during its inauguration.
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The mission of an IHU is in fact to develop pioneering approaches in its field of expertise, with a clinical and translational objective, that is to say keeping in mind concrete applications for patients. In detail, the IHU sets itself the objective of offering “ the most innovative therapies for deaf and hard of hearing people, but also for those suffering from tinnitus, speech and language disorders such as stuttering, autism or even dyslexia. »
To carry out “ this heavy mission “, as described by Anne-Lise Giraud, she will be supported by Anne-Dominique Lodeho-Devauchelle (deputy director), Claire Paquet (scientific director) and Yann Nguyen (clinical director) and will be able to count on the teams from the Hearing Institute (Pasteur Institute), the Lariboisière, Necker-Enfants Malades and Pitié Salpêtrière hospitals, Paris Cité University, Inserm and the Hearing Foundation. Around 300 researchers and doctors will be mobilized.
© Pasteur Institute, Francois Gardy
A large part of the clinical activity of this IHU will in fact be installed within the Lariboisière hospital which will benefit from a major renovation, first via an extension, then a brand new building will emerge from the ground, and will be delivered by 2030.
Concretely, the work of the IHU will be distributed within “work packages”, entities made up of one or two research or clinical teams:
- New treatments and management of sudden and fluctuating deafness
- Prevention and treatment of progressive hearing loss
- Characterization and treatment of auditory perception disorders (tinnitus, hyperacusis and misophonia)
- Hearing and neurodegenerative diseases: from pathological mechanisms to treatments
- Reconfigure disrupted audiophonological networks (dyslexia, autism, stuttering, etc.)
To these five work packages, we must add six others, which will play a supporting role, as well as platforms such as Ceriah, led by Professor Paul Avan.
During the inauguration, round tables were organized on several of these themes with, each time, the presence of patients, illustrating the desire of this IHU to include the latter in its research approach.
