- Scientific cooperation foundation
- Our challenges
- Our promise
- Our vision
- Our mission
- Our positioning
- Our values
- Our method
- Key figures
- Our quality approach
IHU ICAN, a scientific cooperation foundation
Created in 2011, the IHU ICAN (Foundation for Innovation in Cardiometabolism and Nutrition) is a centre of excellence in the field of cardiometabolic diseases: diabetes, obesity, liver diseases (steatosis or MASH), heart and vessel diseases.
Its mission is to accelerate the fight against cardiometabolic diseases, chronic pathologies that disrupt the lives of millions of people (children and adults) and represent one of the major causes of death in France, and the leading cause of death among women.
The experts at the ICAN Foundation work tirelessly to push back the boundaries of scientific knowledge and support patients in their daily battle. Doctors and researchers are convinced that only innovative, multi-disciplinary research will enable us to combat these scourges more effectively by offering personalised care and innovative treatment paths.
The ICAN Foundation brings together a wealth of expertise in patient care and research, bringing the very best in fundamental, translational and clinical research to bear on the needs of patients and inventing the medicine of tomorrow.
Our challenges
Cardiometabolic diseases are a major cause of death in France and around the world.
Diabetes, obesity, liver disease (MASH, formerly NASH), and heart and vascular disease are the public health challenges of today and tomorrow, as the number of people affected increases every year.
Cardiometabolic diseases are diseases of a lifetime: they are chronic, long-term illnesses that patients must learn to manage to avoid acute episodes that are a source of hospitalisation and worsening of the disease.
1 in 3 deaths
are linked to heart disease
17.5 million deaths / year
2500 deaths / year
victims of hepatic steatosis (NASH)
whose figure is expected to triple by 2030
Diabetes is the 4th leading cause of death according to the WHO
70% increase
in deaths attributable to diabetes
between 2000 and 2019
2.8 million deaths / year
victim of obesity
whose figure has almost tripled since 1975
Obesity is the 5th leading cause of death according to the WHO
Our promise
Change scale to invent tomorrow’s medicine in cardiometabolism
By speeding up multidisciplinary collaboration to improve understanding and management of cardiometabolic diseases, reduce the number of acute episodes, increase healthy life expectancy, i.e. by improving the lifelong health of people with cardiometabolic and nutritional diseases so that they can remain active and independent for longer, and in fact reduce medico-social expenditure.
Our vision
Cardiometabolic diseases are a global scourge. To combat these diseases, we need to revolutionise the way we approach them. We need to change scale by conducting collaborative research and offering multidisciplinary, personalised care. Only innovative, multidisciplinary research will make it possible to offer personalised care to combat cardiometabolic diseases more effectively.
Our missions
Research
We bring together the best scientific and clinical forces and the best processes to innovate and translate scientific discoveries into concrete clinical applications for the benefit of patients.
Patient care
We focus all our efforts on giving patients access to innovation and developing new care pathways that integrate e-health for the benefit of patients. These care pathways are designed to offer a new model of personalised care, with earlier diagnosis and fewer hospital admissions.
Training and development
We are training the next generation of researchers and doctors in this new integrated approach between research and care.
Thanks to its integrated approach, the ICAN HCI has put in place all the synergies required for its partnership project, which is based around the detection of innovation and its development.
Prevention
We are raising patients’ awareness of the risks of cardiometabolic diseases and their progression to serious forms, so that we can take sustainable action and change lifestyle behaviour. Primary, secondary and tertiary prevention are an integral part of our approach.
Our positioning
Concentrating expertise to serve the patient
Concentrating excellence to combat cardiometabolic diseases by accelerating the transfer of innovations for the benefit of all patients
At the crossroads of public and private research, the IHU-ICAN offers all the conditions needed to set up innovative care pathways for patients suffering from cardiometabolic diseases and to develop cutting-edge research to better understand the mechanisms of formation and propagation of these diseases. The IHU-ICAN teams are working to accelerate translational research so that discoveries can be rapidly transferred for the benefit of patients.
Our innovative approach is based on our ability to bring together the best expertise in all fields: scientific, medical and technological, and to create links between the public and private sectors to combat cardiometabolic and nutritional diseases.
ICAN is a key player in emerging scientific fields such as health data, imaging and e-health.
Our core values
innovation
excellence
agility
multidisciplinarity
Our approach
Supporting and organising the future management of diseases throughout life:
Expertise
The expertise developed ranges from identifying each individual’s risk to providing smarter, more personalised treatment.
Prevention
Prevention and early diagnosis are key to a healthcare model that focuses more on prevention and anticipates the key issues associated with ageing and maintaining autonomy.
Innovation
In particular, the project aims to develop cutting-edge expertise in big data and digital tools, turning them into practical, high-performance tools for research teams and patients.
Key figures
Research
published. Including 270 in the top 1% of most cited articles
consensus and
international recommendations
Scientific platforms of excellence
Research teams
221 researchers
Dedicated to imaging research,
The only platform of its kind in the Paris region
Care
Doctors
Innovative care pathways
Patients included in registries
cohorts or clinical studies
Centres of reference
Rare diseases
clinical investigation centre
in cardiometabolic
metabolism and nutrition
clinical trials in progress, including
27 industrial and 28 academic
Partnerships
of industrial funding
Patents filed
Large-scale partnership projects
Funding through calls for tender
Our quality approach
The IHU ICAN is the first IHU to have obtained ISO 9001, v2015 certification under the number 2024/109689.1. The certificate of recognition for quality management was issued to the ICAN HIF by the Agence française de normalisation (AFNOR), an internationally recognised reference body in the field.
This certification is a mark of confidence for the researchers and doctors in the IHU ICAN’s scientific community, working in the laboratories of Sorbonne University and the Pitié Salpêtrière and Saint Antoine hospitals, as well as for the platforms’ partners, sponsors and academic and industrial customers . ISO 9001 certification reflects the commitment of the ICAN teams to working according to rigorous and efficient procedures, focused on customer satisfaction…
