The Paris Ile-de-France region is home to major players in the neuroscience and neurodegenerative diseases field: large industrial players and small businesses, and more than half of France's public-sector research capacity (around 5,000 staff researchers, engineers, technicians, PhD students and post-docs) can be found there.

The stakeholders

CNS diseases constitute a key research axis for a number of Ile-de-France-based pharmaceutical R&D laboratories (Sanofi-Aventis, Servier, Ipsen and Laboratoire français du fractionnement et des biotechnologies (LFB)) as well as twenty or so biotech companies. In terms of academic research, there are many key players.

The CNRS (the National Center for Scientific Research) and the INSERM (the National Institute for Healthcare and Medical Research) are present on most academic sites, which generally host joint national institute/university research units. The national research institutes filed 86 patent applications in the CNS field between 2000 and 2004, including 27 in ophthalmology.

The main partners and sites are as follows:

• Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris 6), centered on the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (a legendary site in neurology, run by the AP-HP) and supplemented by the Jussieu research center (integrative animal neuroscience), the Fer à Moulin Institute (neuromolecular cellular biology and research) and, for ophthalmology, the Quinze-Vingts Hospital.
• Rene Descartes University (Paris 5) also features a number of neuroscience laboratories, primarily on the following sites:
  - Sainte-Anne, a key site in the history of psychiatry.
  - Paul Broca, a dozen or so pre-clinical research groups (160 staff in all) work on ageing, psychopharmacology and the brain peptides & mediators that may determine certain types of pathological behavior, such as eating disorders.
  - Saints-Pères, as well as other university and medical center sites.
  
• The CEA (French Atomic Energy Commissariat) in Orsay runs an imaging facility that is unique in Europe (the Frederic Joliot Hospital Service, SHFJ) and leads the IFR 49 neurofunctional imaging unit.
• The Montagne Sainte Geneviève Institutes and Schools, notably the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the Collège de France, the IBPC and the ESPCI, as well as the Pasteur Institute (Neuroscience Department) and other medical centers equally host neuroscience labs.
• The Alfred Fessard Institute of Neurobiology (CNRS) at Gif-sur-Yvette.
• The university campus and/or university medical centers at Paris Sud (Paris 11), Paris 12 and Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.

Enseignement supérieur

Neuroscience research is supported by world-renowned teaching programs, notably including, in 2005:

• two PhD programs (the brain, cognition & behavior at Paris VI University; signaling, nervous system diseases & endocrinology at Paris XI).
• four Masters programs (Paris V, VI & XI).
• The Paris Region stakeholders have established numerous international partnerships, notably with the MIT in Boston, The John Hopkins University, Caltech in Pasadena, the MNI in Montreal, University College London and the Riken Institute in Tokyo.
  

Cohesion-promoting resources

The above set of resources constitutes a true "Neuropole" under construction, whose members are all key stakeholders in the Competitiveness Cluster. A number of major cohesion-promoting centers will emerge, notably including:

The Institute for Cerebral and Medullary Disorders (ICM): the objective is to perform top-class research at the molecular, cellular, physiological and whole animal levels in parallel, underpinned by a cross-cutting approach to experimental therapy. The goal is to identify defective genes and the proteins; to understand diseases on the cellular scale (in order to design molecules which act on the identified defects); to identify and characterize defective neuronal networks; to reinforce clinical research with a view to developing innovative therapies for behavioral disorders and compensating for handicap.

Located within the Pitié-Salpêtrière university medical center, the ICM will feature 19,000 square meters of research labs, technology platforms and premises housing a clinical investigation center and a company incubator. With about 750 research staff, the Institute will constitute the world's largest research center in the field of nervous system disease and is due to start operating in 2009.
The Vision Institute: located within the Quinze-Vingts Hospital, this Institute will be dedicated to the development of eye disease treatments. The founding members are the INSERM, the Pierre & Marie Curie University (Paris VI), the Quinze-Vingts National Ophthalmology Center and the Adolphe de Rothschild Ophthalmological Foundation.

By 2007, the Institute will bring together basic & clinical biomedical research groups and companies (with a total of more than 400 staff) on a single, shared site (with over 5,000 square meters of floor space), making it a unique project in France in this field. It will be equipped with hi-tech platforms and research equipment. Further, 2,000 square meters of floor space will subsequently come on-stream for a specialized incubator for companies in the ophthalmological sector. Other vision-related business premises may also be built, together with halls of residence for visiting researchers and businesspeople.

The Vision Institute will follow a thematic and methodological continuum, drawing together the research groups and their activities as a whole. One of the main guidelines for the Institute will link the physiology and interactions of retinal cells with therapeutic approaches seeking to maintain or even renew cell function in degenerative diseases of the retina.

The SHFJ imaging facility in the southern part of the Paris Ile-de-France region (Orsay) will soon be supplemented by the NeuroSpin platform at Saclay and the Mircen facility at Fontenay-aux-Roses (see the "Biomedical Imaging" section).

An animal house with more than 50,000 ageing rodents: this facility is under construction at the Charles Foix Hospital (AP-HP) and will be a unique tool in Europe for studying the mechanisms of ageing.

Biological resource centers: the Paris Ile-de-France region is home to several DNA banks (with dozens of thousands of samples) which are closely linked to the Genopole and the Genethon, together with some unique brain tissue banks.