Created in 1998 on the initiative of the French Government, local authorities and the “Association Française contre les Myopathies”, Genopole® is based on an original concept: bringing together academic and private research laboratories, biotechnology companies and higher education in one place. Genopole® is original in that it unites on a single site public and private research laboratories, appropriate university education and biotechnology companies, for which the scientific and economic stakes are considerable; it is a context never seen before in the development of genetics, genomics and biotechnology. Its annual budget is 13.606 M €. 94.18 M € have already been raised by Genopole® companies.

The Genopole® objective is to facilitate the development of biology on a large scale and the creation of biotechnology companies in order to place France at the forefront of international scientific and industrial competition. Genopole® has been entrusted with the mission of setting up and leading research laboratories on genomics, post-genomics and related sciences. 

Paris « Image, Multimedia and Digital Life » (IMVN) cluster relates to creativity, edition, communication and services for the digital content and knowledge. France is holding a worldwide leadership in content creation for cinema, cartoons, television, games and advertisement. The national market of cultural industries of content represent more than € 12 billions. 80% of those industries are located in the Paris region, and this region also gathers 90% of the educative edition companies. The budget for 2006 is estimated at € 1.207 Million.

The cluster is designed to foster co-operative projects involving various digital technology industries in defense, education, telecommunication, creative content and games.6 strategic activities are addressed :

• digital contents
• videogames
• digital education (e-learning)
• digital “heritage”
• image indexation
• knowledge engineering
• new wireless uses

The Lyon Biopole cluster pools together the economic, academic and tehnological assets of the region in the fields of biotechnologies. It is made of 5 major components:

• Industry: global leading companies like: Merial, sanofi-Pasteur, BioMérieux, and emerging small companies such as Flamel, OPi, Protéin'eXpert etc., employing some 28,000 people in the region.
• Research: Lyon and Grenoble gather some 2500 scientists in infectiology (Sanofi-pasteur, BioMérieux, IFR Biosciences, Lyon Gerland, Inserm, CNRS, Université Joseph Fourier, Institut de Virologie Moléculaire et Structurale, Partnership for Structural Biology...) and 4000 researchers in micro-nanotechnologies (CEA-LETI, Minatec, STMicroelectronics, Philips, Motorola…), both in private and public research institutes.
• Universities and higher engineering colleges (“Grandes Ecoles”): 9 universities and 35 « Ecoles » (ENS, Claude Bernard de Lyon I University, Joseph Fourier de Grenoble University,…) offering life sciences curriculums for 55 000 students.
• National Reference Centres for flue, legionnaire’s disease, viral hemorrhagic fevers,…
• Larger international scientific facilities: l'ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility), P4 Jean Mérieux-Inserm Laboratory,), LEBM (Laboratoire Européen de Biologie Moléculaire), l'ILL (Institut Paul Langevin), RMN Haut Champ…