Developping innovation

Access to technological platforms

The platform offer:
a Genopole specificity

Whether academic labs generating new discoveries or biotech companies confirming their potential, access to technological equipment is an ineludible key to success.
Genopole supports progress in life sciences and the development of biotech innovation by making onerous technological equipment available to its labs and businesses on a shared-use model. Called "platforms" in Genopole parlance, this facet comprises 25 technological installations comprising more than 600 pieces of sometimes state-of-the-art equipment and the competencies that go with them.

25 platforms for research and biotech innovation

Genopole provides its actors with access to:

17 technological platforms with specialized equipment and the expertise needed to run them,
2 computer software platforms,
5 ancillary services platforms reserved for the occupants of specific premises (incubator or buildings),
1 informatics infrastructure.

The platform offer has sufficient diversity to cover the totality of biotech-related research domains. The platforms notably supply the technologies that are inescapable for the growth of innovative therapies and the bioeconomy (Genopole's strategic sectors) and furthermore contribute largely to the biocluster's attractiveness.

"Genopole continuously optimizes its platform offer to supply its actors with the technological means they need to empower biotechnologies, now recognized as key solution providers for today's health and environmental concerns." JULIEN PICOT, Core Facilities manager

Encourage the user network and catalyze innovation

To inform Genopole's citizens about the available equipment and technologies and to maximize platform use rates, Genopole facilitated 31 "Sciences & Techno" meetings, four of which included innovative equipment demonstrations.

In 2022, there were 227 platform-laboratory, platform-company, or platform-platform interactions, 90% of which resulted in research partnerships, service deliveries, or co-supervised student projects.

11 new pieces of shared-use equipment and an additional offer in cellular biology

Genopole earmarked €1.6 million in 2022 to ensure that its current equipment was maintained to the highest standards and to acquire novel equipment responding to the new needs of its actors or to the evolution of techniques. Particularly, a high-resolution mass spectrometer, a digital PCR system, a multimode microplate reader, a pipetting robot, a device for in-gel protein quantification and study and an integrated system of 48 microfermentors were brought in to strengthen the offer. France has only three structures currently equipped with the microfermentor system, which, at Genopole, will be managed by the start-up Nutropy and mutualized to accelerate the development of bioprocesses for the production of compound of interest in food, therapeutics, industry and more.

The cellular biology platform at I-Stem has also joined the Genopole shared-use offer. Able to perform all steps in cell-line creation, genomic control and master cell banking, this platform will provide biocluster actors with a new service in tailored cell production, potentially useful in, for example, research on biological or pathological mechanisms, or in therapeutic compound screening.

The DNA & Cells Bank, a key contributor to the innovative therapies sector at Genopole, was equipped with two additional nitrogen tanks. As Europe's leading bank for rare genetic diseases, it conserves more than 430,000 samples and processes 3,000 new samples of patient and patient-family blood or DNA yearly.

Also contributing to the growth of biotherapies is the laboratory Cithera, a center for cellular bioengineering innovation, which is currently establishing a national, clinical-grade iPS cell bank at Genopole. In 2022, Cithera benefited from 26 dedicated scientific instruments: epifluorescent video microscopes, CO₂ incubators, vacuum systems, etc.