[French biomedical competitiveness clusters: opportunities for public-private partnerships]

A "competitive cluster" is a partnership between businesses, research units and training centers, working together to generate synergies for innovative projects in a particular geographic area. Since 2005, the first five calls for cluster projects have led to the funding of 645 R&D projects involving 13,000 researchers. Together, the R&D expenditure of these projects has so far totaled nearly Euro 3.6 billion. This included public funding of Euro 1300 million, Euro 840 million of which was provided by central government. In the biomedical field, 80 R&D projects have been funded to the tune of Euro 140 million (Euro 81 million from central government and Euro 59 million from local government). A total of 288 agreements have been signed, 12% with large companies, 36% with SMEs and 49.8% with public research laboratories. Alongside the more classical biomedical research funding sources, such as the National Research Agency and government-sponsored projects (on cancer, Alzheimer's disease, rare diseases, etc.), competitive clusters provide the impetus for profound changes in research culture. They draw on the principle of professional guidance and public-private partnerships to build a bridge between the "academic" and "industrial" research arenas. By facilitating knowledge generation and sharing, competitive clusters create a climate of action-driven mutual respect and trust.