Marseille is gearing up to become the world capital of immunology

The Marseille Immunology Biocluster (MIB), backed by a €96 million investment as part of a France 2030 10-year plan, aims to position France as a world leader in the field of immunology. Both a biocluster and a catalyst for innovation, MIB seeks to accelerate the emergence of new antibody-based diagnostic tools and therapies for the benefit of patients, and to push back the boundaries of innovation in healthcare.

Immunotherapy offers hope to millions of patients waiting for therapeutic solutions. Thus, the focus of the MIB is on designing innovative therapies, new diagnostic tools and medtech developments. How? By using the antibody tool, a fairly versatile product that can prevent a pathogenic virus from entering the body.

Antibodies can target a cancer cell or immunomodulate autoimmune diseases. The idea is to design a sort of hub to create immunological medicinal tools around these concepts, with projects coming from all over France, from the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris to Toulouse or Brest. These therapeutic agents can be used in a number of ways to treat a broad spectrum of pathologies.

MIB’s strength lies in its cross-disciplinary approach. Today, it is made up of a network of healthcare professionals and experts, immunology researchers, as well as clinicians in four therapeutic areas: oncology, infectiology, autoimmune diseases and inflammatory diseases.

Four decades of specialisation in immunology

Over the past 40 years, Marseille has succeeded in building public-private collaboration, an entrepreneurial biotechnology ecosystem specialised in immunology, with the creation in 1982 of “Immuno-tech” - Marseille's first biotech company using monoclonal antibodies for diagnostic antibodies.

Since then, numerous other initiatives have been added, making Marseille a land of innovation in immunology that draws on all the region's strengths.

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