The objective of the Directorate of Innovation is to bring innovations to patients by enabling and accelerating the development of innovative products or companies in the field of neurology.
The missions of Paris Brain Institute's Innovation Directorate are as follows:
- Identify know-how and inventions with potential for industrial exploitation
- Implement strategies for maturation and patenting
- Developing and sustaining R&D partnerships with industrial enterprises
- Assist researchers and clinicians in selecting the most appropriate commercialization strategy and the right industrial partner to ensure rapid transfer of results from the bench to the bedside
- Strengthen the acceleration programme with innovation units dedicated to applied research and design, focusing on product development in a spirit of Biotech and MedTech
- Support the creation of start-up Biotech and MedTech companies and enable their incubation in the iPEPS incubator
The ambition of the Directorate of Innovation is to bridge the gap between academic and clinical research. Academic (basic research and applied) research solutions have a low level of maturity, which needs to be increased in order to obtain solutions with a higher level of maturity that can then reach the stage of clinical research or even further their integration into the health system.
To this end, the Directorate of Innovation concentrates its efforts on increasing the level of maturity of the results of academic research by using all the levers of valorisation available within the Institute.
Innovation Units
The Innovation Directorate has developed 3 specialized innovation units by technology or knowledge areas:
- Sleeping Beauties: identification and development of new molecules (re-use of molecules or design of new molecules) to produce drug candidates that can be made available to clinicians
- Genov: development of gene and cell therapy tools to treat rare genetic neurological diseases by exploiting discoveries made by scientific and clinical teams in the field of genetics
- Care Lab : development of new low-tech tools and software, based on analysis of the patient's journey and the needs of patients/caregivers, using the Design thinking methodology.
Start-up studio
Paris Brain Institute's Innovation Directorate has set up a studio start-up to help researchers from the Institute and elsewhere to set up their own businesses through:
- NeurAL: a program that drives and whispers research projects to the creation of a society. NeurAL offers entrepreneurship expertise, support, and access to the Institute’s facilities and funds.
- iPEPS incubator: this incubator focuses on start-ups from the NeurAL programme or other neurological research centres across the EU.
Business Unit
The Directorate of Innovation has developed a Business Unit which supports the Institute's researchers in the establishment of scientific collaborations based on:
- Business Development: to promote the Institute's scientific and medical expertise and skills to develop collaborative research programs with industrial partners. Propose the most favourable route of valuation for patents or assets developed by the Institute through the establishment of licensing agreements and co-development strategies
- Intellectual property: to study the patentability of research results, to ensure that patent filing criteria are met, to create favourable conditions for the secure transfer of data and biological material
- Strategic Alliances: managing public-private consortia.
