IRNEM, is a federation of 16 research units funded by a French national public research organisation such as INSERM (National institute for health and medical research), CNRS (National center for scientific research) or the University Paris Descartes. It includes the 6 Research units of Imagine. It involves about 960 scientists (592 FTE), clinicians, young researchers in training and the invaluable support teams of engineers, technicians and administrators.
The principal areas of research at Necker are immunology and hematology, genetics, cell biology and physiology, and infectiology. The integration of academic research and clinical services, particularly, the development of kidney transplants and bone marrow grafts, the constitution, the follow-up and the precise phenotyping of the numerous cohorts of auto-immune diseases and above all the cohorts of families with genetic diseases have contributed greatly to the advances made by the research teams on the site in the area of the localisation, cloning, sequencing, description of mutations, understanding of mechanisms and therapeutic approaches to genetic handicaps in children, to the life-threatening immunodefi ciency diseases and to the auto-immune diseases.
IRNEM receives funding from the French Ministry of Research and from other public and private sources in order to develop core facilities and to foster scientific collaboration. From its creation in 2000, the main objective of IRNEM has been to optimise the use of fi nancial, technological and human resources to create favorable conditions for basic and clinical research at the highest level.
The strategy of the IFR has been to develop core facilities or technological platforms based on the needs of the principal scientific areas at Necker. The facilities include proteomics, cellular imaging, flow cytometry, sorting and analysis, DNA bank, and a scientifi c information platform, bioinformatics, gene transfer, genomics and also an animal facility with a housing capacity of 16.350 rodents and 18 rabbits as well as a large breeding facility (160 mouse lines).
More recently, IRNEM has taken part in the movement of restructuring of the research forces in Necker which will lead to a more visible and efficient organisation. Since the creation of Imagine (2007), decisions of improving core facilities are discussed together by IRNEM and Imagine with the objective that the core facilities operate for the whole campus.
http://www.necker.fr/irnem/