France-based pharmaceutical companies Sanofi and Innate Pharma have helped launch MI-Mabs, a new immunotechnology centre in Marseille, France that aims to develop treatments for cancer and inflammatory disease.
The two corporates were joined by Aix-Marseille Université and its technology transfer office Protisvalor; CNRS, France’s national centre for scientific research; Inserm, the French institute of health and medical research; Institut Paoli-Calmettes, an oncology research institute, and three of the institute’s research centres: Ciml, the Centre of Immunology of Marseille-Luminy, the Cancer Research Centre of Marseille and the Centre for Immunophenomics.
The new research centre obtained an initial €19m ($20m) in funding when it won in the preindustrial demonstrators category of Investissements d’Avenir (Investments for the Future), a €47bn initiative by France’s government launched in 2010 to support research, tech transfer and the creation of a tech cluster in Paris.
The new research centre aims to establish Marseille as a global player in immune-based therapies and will focus on developing monoclonal antibodies.
The antibodies have the potential to fight cancer and inflammatory diseases and will now be trialled on in vivo models of human disease and biological samples.