A Pasteurian approach to infectious diseases: today's research, tomorrow's medicine

Having developed most of my career in research on host-pathogen relations and having significant experience in scientific cooperation at the international level, I decided to accept the challenge to settle and work in Shanghai in the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai (IPS), a center belonging to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The IPS arose from a France-China agreement signed in 2004 for bilateral cooperation in the fight against emergent infectious diseases. IPS is a member of a network of 33 Institut Pasteur centers (IPIN) all over the world and one of the few non-governmental organizations to be a permanent member of the assembly of the World Health Organization.

Simultaneously with my nomination, Professor Tang Hong was appointed as Director General of the IPS. Together we have built and started our project for IPS. The project aims in fine to provide IPS with a unique and distinctive identity within CAS through the implementation of research excellence, competitive and visible internationally, focused on the study of infectious diseases in China and Southeast Asia.

To achieve these goals we have developed our program in the framework of coordinates set by CAS for the 13th plan and the four missions specific to IPIN: i) basic research, ii) innovation and industrial application, iii) teaching and training, and iv) public health service for infectious diseases.

As a priority, we placed research on human pathologies and its translational aspects at the heart of our projects. It is in this context that we have established a long-term collaboration with Guangzhou Mother-Child hospitals supported by the pooling of projects and human resources. In terms of the organization of the research, our first action was to promote transversal projects between the teams of our institute as well as, where possible, interdisciplinary research, particularly with other IPIN centers. The recruitment of new talents has been boosted and five new investigators, leaders of new research teams, have been or will be recruited to reinforce essential areas of investigation. In addition, we have improved our cell imaging and pathogen diagnostic/discovery platforms, two essential structures for our research on host-pathogen interactions and the pathogenesis of infectious diseases. Finally, thanks to the joint efforts of CAS, Fondation Mérieux and the Institut Pasteur in Paris, we will create in 2018 a new laboratory entirely dedicated to research on pathogens requiring handling with high security confinement (Biosafety Level 4, BSL4) . This research will be carried out partly in the new BSL4 structure created in Wuhan, resulting from the China-France collaboration on emerging infectious diseases. Finally, if the focus is on recruiting new talents, we are not neglecting the attraction of well-known personalities, indisputable international leaders, through the national SUPERTALENTS program.