Press Releases :

On 5 December at 6:50pm on the France 2 television channel, Julien Clerc, patron of Téléthon 2008 and Thomas, the 8-year old ambassador for patients and their families, will kick off this year’s Téléthon live from Paris.
What is the Téléthon? It’s France pulling together – a vibrant France, as innovative in festivity as in research, a France which stimulates the combat against rare diseases in Europe, a France which believes in the future and is prepared to tackle fate. This year more than ever the Téléthon will be a rendez-vous of festivity, solidarity and combat to change the state of affairs. Together we can take up this exceptional challenge – bringing about the medicine of the future!

The ADNA (Advanced Diagnostics for New Therapeutic Approaches) program which is being coordinated by Mérieux Alliance, has just been given the European Commission’s approval for an allocation of state research and innovation aid from OSEO in the amount of €89.5 million.

With the support of Mérieux Alliance, the ADNA program brings together four players: bioMérieux and GenoSafe in the field of diagnostics, and Généthon and Transgene in the field of therapeutics. It also calls upon the expertise of other partners, such as: the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS), the Lyon University Hospitals (HCL), STMicroelectronics (ST), and Claude Bernard University in Lyon (UCBL).

The ADNA program intends to contribute to the development of more personalized medicine in the field of infectious diseases, cancer, and rare genetic diseases, by providing healthcare players with innovative products and services in the field of theranostics.

A team of researchers led by Anselme Perrier of the Institute of Stem Cells for the Treatment and Study of Monogenic Diseases (Inserm/UEVE UMR861, I-STEM, AFM joint research unit) directed by Marc Peschanski, has just succeeded in performing a first graft of human embryonic stem cells in an animal model for Huntington’s disease. The researchers have thus developed a protocol for transforming these cells into the type of neuron specifically affected in Huntinton’s disease. Following this, they demonstrated that neural progenitors from embryonic stem cells could differentiate themselves into neurons in rat brains presenting lesions similar to those observed in humans.

This work is available online on the PNAS review website. It was in part financed by the AFM (French Muscular Dystrophy Association) thanks to Téléthon donations.

AFM and Cellectis, the genome engineering company have announced that on July 24th 2008, the two organizations signed a research and licensing agreement to set up a 5-year program for the development of meganuclease-based genome surgery - an innovative technology that enables the correction of given genetic defects. Meganucleases are enzymes capable of cutting DNA at a very precise point and thus correcting a gene mutation. A healthy gene portion can then be inserted by using the cell's natural repair system. In an initial project phase, the technology will be developed for use on 2 candidate genes: those coding for beta-globin and dystrophin.

Yesterday the board of directors at Genethon nominated a new president to head the laboratory created in 1990 by the AFM (French Muscular Dystrophy Association). Thus Yves Champey succeeds Bernard Barataud, who has decided to hand over the reins after heading the laboratory between 1990 and 1995 and then between 1999 and 2008.