Thanks to its integrated approach, the ICAN IHU has put in place all the synergies required for its partnership project , which focuses on identifying innovation and developing partnerships.
The acceleration of partnerships is made possible by the integration of two of ICAN’s strategic divisions: the Innovation and Research Valorisation division and the Legal division; the IHU also benefits from the expertise of its founders (Sorbonne University, INSERM, AP-HP).
Our dedicated team
The mission of the Innovation and Research Transfer Unit is to provide support for innovation promoters:
- Internally within the community of clinical and research teams,
- Externally, in the search for funding (public, private, European, etc.), and as part of academic partnerships or R&D collaborations with companies involved in cardiometabolic and nutritional diseases.
The team is closely involved in all the projects carried out by the teams of doctors and researchers. From the outset of their project, it offers tailor-made support and personalised advice throughout the project set-up process, right through to the potential for commercial exploitation.
Thanks to its 360° approach, the team has put in place all the synergies needed to offer a complete range of services, from the identification of innovations to the establishment of partnerships. This contribution can be tailored to the needs of each innovation or partnership. The team’s added value ranges from co-innovation to product development support for market access and integration into innovative care pathways.
IHU Track
The ICAN UHI was the first IHU to set up a regulatory fast-track with the Pitié-Salpêtrière URC (Clinical Research Unit). Coordinated by a URC-DRCI project manager, dedicated to the projects of its scientific community, the validation of regulatory dossiers is thus accelerated and the arrangements are made in collaboration between ICAN and the URC.
A one-stop shop
The IHU ICAN has set up a “one-stop shop” for R&D projects, opening the door to a full range of expertise. ICAN facilitates access to its expertise, technologies and internal communities. In this way, the IHU simplifies the contractual processes for studies with academic promotion or the use of its platforms, and saves all its partners precious time.
Our mission
“To focus on translational research for the benefit of innovative care pathways
Accelerating the transfer of technology to the economic fabric and to the patient’s bedside is the driving force behind our technology transfer activities.
Thanks to the joint work of its teams dedicated to partnerships, bringing together the scientific operations and legal and development divisions, ICAN has put in place an integrated, one-stop partnership approach to help researchers, clinicians and companies turn their research into innovations to improve patient care.
Support for both internal and external innovation is organised around 6 areas:
1. Detection – Protection for community investigators and researchers
2. Getting to grips with and testing new products, thanks to our technology platforms
3. Proof of clinical concept, with support from leading experts in the therapeutic field
4. Funding for academic R&D, responding to competitive calls for proposals and seeking private funding
5. Innovative patient pathways through the integration of healthcare innovations
1) Detection – Protection for community investigators and researchers
A one-stop shop for researchers and clinicians
The ICAN HHI has set up a “one-stop shop” opening the door to all the expertise required for an R&D project. ICAN has become a facilitator of access to unique expertise: technological, medical and scientific, in conjunction with its community of doctors and researchers and with the support of the operational teams, the ICAN Clinical Investigation platform and the IHU’s technological platforms.
With its one-stop shop, the IHU facilitates the contractual processes for clinical studies with academic promotion or for the use of its platforms, and saves all its partners valuable time.
Close links with founding partners
ICAN also offers easy access to the expertise of the technology transfer offices of its founders, Sorbonne University (SATT Lutech), AP-HP or Inserm, depending on the nature of the invention.
Detection campaigns carried out by the IHU teams aim to identify innovations and create a dynamic of co-innovations between the laboratories and clinical departments within the perimeter (translational) but also between cardiometabolic disciplines (diabetes-cardio, Nash-cardio, etc.) in order to invent a global and personalised medicine to meet the specific needs of the management of cardiometabolic diseases.
2) Getting started & test bench
A tailor-made approach
The ICAN IHU’s platforms are open to R&D collaborations with private players and academic partnerships, enabling each project to be tailored to its specific needs, with the benefit of the expertise and support of our technology platform teams.
The regulatory aspect is studied in its entirety from the outset of the project in order to remove any legal and regulatory obstacles that may arise throughout the project.
Thanks to the ICAN IHU teams, the regulatory aspect is integrated at a very early stage and becomes a strength that places the technology at a competitive level. Global approach and regulatory strategy, clinical study methodology and design, assistance with protocol drafting, study sizing and cost assessment… every aspect of the project is studied.
IHU ICAN – Test bed
The close collaboration developed between the ICAN IHU and its founders: AP-HP, Inserm and Sorbonne-Université, provides access to a wide range of expertise in addition to that offered directly by ICAN. Products or services are evaluated in real-life situations to test their technological performance, how well they work for the user and how well they meet market needs: proof of concept, de-risking, identification of patient needs and competitive positioning.
3) Clinical proof of concept
Clinical studies can be carried out at our clinical investigation platform: ICAN Clinical Investigation, located at the heart of the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital, and in collaboration with the ARCHIMEDE DMU (Alliance Réanimation Cardiologie Chirurgie cardio thoracique et vasculaire, médecine Interne, Métabolisme Endocrinologie, Diabétologie Et nutrition) which has 347 beds, 57 day places and 970 professionals on the Pitié-Salpêtrière, Saint-Antoine and Armand Trousseau hospital sites. ICAN is supported by a network of 168 internationally renowned physicians.
The ICAN IHU also provides access to a vast and unique range of clinical data and biological samples collected in cohort studies.
4) Funding academic R&D: responding to competitive calls for proposals and seeking private funding
Dedicated teams
The approach to commercialising the research and expertise of the IHU ICAN community is supported by two strategic divisions of the partnership, the Scientific Operations Division and the Legal and Commercialisation Division. The commercialisation carried out by ICAN is based on a model of integration not only within ICAN’s internal organisation but also between ICAN and its founders.
ICAN accelerates partnerships by integrating the support functions required for partnerships via its one-stop shop.
Help with designing and setting up projects
At ICAN, all the different areas of expertise required (scientific, regulatory, financial, legal and development) are involved from the design stage of a research programme by the ICAN community or from the first contact with a partner. This project-based organisation enables constraints to be anticipated and integrated into the construction of the project. The regulatory, legal and contractual stages become competitive advantages for the companies we work with, thanks to the way we anticipate and integrate them into the companies’ development projects.
Support in synergy with our founders’ teams
As a one-stop shop for all the translational expertise in its community, ICAN is the gateway to R&D projects. In this context, the expertise of the founders’ operational units (Sorbonne University, INSERM, AP-HP) supports ICAN’s skills, without creating duplication. The ICAN partnership relies on professionals specialising in the medical and scientific themes of the IHU, who are in daily contact with the scientific community.
ICAN was the first IHU to set up a regulatory fast-track with the Pitié-Salpêtrière URC. With a URC-DRCI project manager dedicated to the projects of our scientific community, the validation of regulatory dossiers is accelerated and set-ups are carried out in collaboration between ICAN and the URC.
ICAN’s ambition is to simplify the contractual processes for studies with academic promotion (AP-HP and other sponsors), or for the use of our platforms.
Thanks to this one-stop shop, ICAN has become, for investigators and private partners alike, a facilitator for accessing the expertise and technologies of our community, as well as the global offering of our founders, which are necessary for carrying out projects.
5) Innovative patient pathways
The IHU ICAN – a leading player in health data
The explosion in cardiometabolic diseases (diabetes, obesity, liver disease and heart disease), chronic illnesses that patients will have to integrate into their daily lives, means that hospital care will have to be scaled up, with the creation of innovative care pathways that integrate more links between the city and the hospital and e-health tools to improve patient follow-up.
A range of services for Medical Devices (MD)
ICAN also offers a range of technical and regulatory services for medical devices, including e-health tools, covering the entire creation chain right through to the notified bodies:
- Anticipation of medico-technical and medico-economic assessments with a view to reimbursement (LPPR registration)
- Definition of new care pathways and innovative organisational projects, art 51 LFSS2018
A Living Lab approach to innovation in cardiometabolism
ICAN’s Living Lab approach stimulates sustainable innovations in healthcare. The IHU’s operational teams support the creation process at every stage of the project. Thanks to its proximity to patients and links with the best medical and scientific experts in cardiometabolism in France, the ICAN enables innovative projects to be carried out in perfect harmony with patients’ needs in order to meet market requirements and design products or services that meet a specific patient need.
Partnerships
SIEMENS HEALTHINEERS
Siemens Healthineers wants to encourage scientific and medical innovation to support the development of precision medicine and the transformation of care pathways. SIEMENS Healthineers wanted to work with the ICAN teams to support the development of the cardiovascular imaging sector. By making human and technological resources available to the ICAN teams for 5 years in order to create synergies between their expertise.
In particular, thanks to its ‘compressed sensing’ technology , SIEMENS Healthineers is working with the IHU teams to develop new, faster image acquisition sequences to improve patient comfort during MRI examinations (reducing the time spent in the machine and the number of apneas required to acquire good quality cardiac images), which will enable more elderly patients to benefit from this type of high-performance examination.
The teams are also working on improving models of digital cardiac twins used in the preparation of operations to improve multidisciplinary medical decision-making.
Medical imaging is playing an increasingly important role in the healthcare sector. Advances in imaging techniques mean that diseases can now be detected earlier and more accurately, enabling more targeted, less invasive treatment and close monitoring of therapeutic response. To take this a step further, ICAN has decided to invest significantly in this area with the acquisition of a state-of-the-art MRI dedicated entirely to human imaging research. This ambitious decision will give a boost to research into cardiometabolic imaging. One of the major challenges in cardiac imaging is obtaining quality images of an organ that is constantly moving.
The association with SIEMENS Healthineers is an additional advantage for developing innovative work in cardiometabolic imaging for the benefit of patients.
Agnès Malgouyres – Head of Artificial Intelligence at SIEMENS HEALTHINEERS
“Beyond the installation of this system, the IHU-ICAN and Siemens Healthineers wish to establish a genuine clinical-scientific partnership together. Based on the complementary nature of IHU-ICAN’s medical expertise and Siemens Healthineers’ technological skills, this partnership took shape in 2020 through two successful applications to two European calls for projects: EIT Health and Horizon 2020.
- The first project, CMRAI (EIT HEALTH) is dedicated to pathologies of the aorta, which are currently under-diagnosed, for which Siemens Healthineers will develop ultra-fast MRI data acquisition techniques.
- The second project, MAESTRIA (Horizon 2020), aims to build and validate the first integrative digital diagnostic platform for atrial cardiomyopathy. It will involve the construction and development by Siemens Healthineers of the Digital Twin of the heart’s atria. This work will follow on from the development of the digital twin for the ventricles, which is already operational.
Siemens Healthineers is proud to be working alongside Prof. Stéphane Hatem and Prof. Alban Redheuil in such an innovative and promising context. This partnership also illustrates Siemens Healthineers’ determination to prepare for tomorrow’s healthcare today.”
CORWAVE
CorWave is a French high-tech company that develops innovative implantable cardiac pumps using a breakthrough technology: the undulating membrane. This patented technology, inspired by nature, is capable of reproducing a pulse and blood flow speeds similar to those of a healthy heart, aiming to reduce the risks of complications associated with current pumps.
CorWave has therefore chosen to work with major players in the cardiac field, such as the Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière AP-HP, the Institut de Cardiométabolisme et de Nutrition (ICAN) and the CHRU de Lille.
The CALYPSO programme aims to optimise and then clinically validate the CorWave LVAD device developed by CorWave, thanks to the highly specialised cardiology expertise of healthcare professionals at the AP-HP and members of the IHU-ICAN community. In CALYPSO, the ICAN teams are contributing the expertise needed to analyse inflammation using cytometry and chromatography, as well as the data produced by current pumps, in order to study all the interactions that can influence the operation of implantable pumps and cause undesirable effects.
The CALYPSO programme is designed to validate this cutting-edge technology and provide a solution for heart failure patients who develop complications following the implantation of heart pumps. The Calypso consortium aims to place its members at the forefront of the treatment of end-stage heart failure.
Louis de Lillers – Managing Director CORWAVE
” ICAN’s expertise has been called upon as part of the CALYPSO PSPC. It plays a central role in setting up clinical trials, which should provide us with important information to optimise our product before it is made available to patients. The ultimate goal is to save patients suffering from advanced heart failure and give them as normal a life as possible
