National biomarker meeting

Date: 17 December 2015 in Montpellier’s Corum
Organisers: DVS Biomarkers and Companion Tests (CVT Aviesan) – Eurobiomed and Medicen Paris Region competitiveness clusters, in partnership with Cancer-Bio-Santé, Alsace BioValley, Atlanpole Biotherapies and Lyonbiopôle
Theme: a day of public/private and private/private exchanges on the theme of biomarkers
Participants: industrialists, researchers, clinicians and investors

This national event is based on the success of the annual diagnostics convention organised by Euromediag, a working group on diagnostics from Eurobiomed, which has been working to develop the diagnostics sector in the Languedoc-Roussillon and PACA regions since 2007.

Preliminary programme

9:00 am: Welcoming address
9:30 am: Biomarkers: a national issue – DVS Biomarkers and Companion tests (AVIESAN)
11:00 am: Round tables

• How can we make progress together on biomarker validation? – facilitated by Pascale Augé, Inserm Transfert
• Driving innovation in diagnostics to generate new treatments, especially for neglected pathologies – facilitated by Gérard Mathis, CISBIO Bioassays

1:30 pm: A leader in diagnostics shares his/her experience of collaborative practice
2:00 pm: Immunoscore®, an experiment in the commercialisation of an academic study by Industry – Vincent Fert, HalioDx – Jérôme Galon, Integrative Cancer Immunology, IPMC, Paris
2:30 – 6:00 pm: Business convention

150 people are expected in Montpellier for this meeting, which is aimed at spurring the commercialisation of new biomarkers. This event will be a continuation of the annual 2-day meeting held by Aviesan’s Multi-Organisation Thematic Institute (ITMO) for Health Technologies and CVT Aviesan on 15 and 16 December.

Register for the National Biomarker Meeting

Diagnostics and biomarkers constitute a special sector which is changing rapidly, especially since the advent of so-called “personalised” medicine, which is one of the major challenges for tomorrow’s medicine.
Many biomarkers have already been identified, but very few have reached the market. Biomarker validation remains crucial, and will involve strengthening public/private partnerships and funding for innovation.
In this context, the DVS has carried out 3 surveys to generate a composite portrait of the ideal biomarker in order to strengthen public/private partnerships. These studies have made it possible to shed light on promising and emerging areas. Moreover, they have highlighted the need to organise and pool strengths in cross-cutting areas such as biomarker validation.
These studies have also revealed two situations:

• Areas in which biomarkers have already demonstrated their relevance and legitimacy (such as oncology).
• Diseases for which there is no treatment, and on which the large pharmaceutical groups have little or no position, but for which a search for new biomarkers might ultimately provide leads for the discovery of new treatments.