From the headlines

A Scientific Cooperation Foundation: what for?

Under the French government’s 2005 Research Pact, the scientific community has access to public financing and private-sector partnerships to help set up scientific excellence centers running projects on specific research and care topics (Centres Thématiques de Recherche et de Soins: CTRS).
The government intended with this scheme to facilitate the growth of top-level research and care clusters, emerging from France’s finest research and treatment facilities, to rank among the best in the world.

The Neurodis project was selected to become a thematic research and treatment center, backed by a Foundation for Scientific Cooperation established in August 2007.
The project covers the field of neuroscience applied to nervous system disorder and neurological disability.

Editorial

Mobilizing expertise in the fight against nervous system disease

Our aim is to develop strong interactions and transfer strategies between fundamental research and treatment in the field of nervous system disease.

The first step was to combine the neuroscience research and care resources of the universities and teaching hospitals of Lyon, Grenoble, St Étienne and Clermont-Ferrand.

The critical mass thereby attained enables the cluster to compete with the great European neuroscience research centers, with the added advantage that cooperation between clinical and research teams is already ongoing in the Lyon and Grenoble Neuroscience Institute. We are grateful to our regional institutional partners and to INSERM (the national health and medical research institute) and the CEA (atomic energy commissariat) for their enthusiastic support.

The second step was to dedicate the whole project to transversal research axes from cell-level to neurologic disease, with the goal of discovering and validating new prevention and treatment strategies for neurosensory, neuromotor, cognitive and psychological disabilities.