Paris

Researchers at INSERM, France's biomedical research agency, are being offered more money to establish partnerships with outside universities, hospitals and industry.

At the same time, the agency is trying to reform its relationships with partner organizations inside and outside the government, says Christian Bréchot, INSERM's director. He adds that the reforms may lay the foundations for an entirely new structure for French biomedical research.

Harbinger of change: Christian Bréchot wants to increase mobility among French researchers. Credit: C. DUPONT

This autumn, Bréchot will launch a programme of five-year “interface” contracts for INSERM researchers. These are designed to increase mobility between the agency's labs and external partners. Under the contracts, the researchers will keep their civil-service status and salary, but they will receive an extra 1,500 euros (US$1,450) a month from one of the partners. In parallel, the partner organizations will run a similar scheme to allow their staff to spend some time in an INSERM lab, with some of the costs of temporarily replacing these staff being covered by INSERM.

“In France, mobility is still often associated with failure rather than career progression,” says Bréchot. “That needs to change. This model will combine the security of tenure track with the flexibility and stimulation of working with other partners.” He hopes that 600–800 of INSERM's 3,000 researchers will be working under the new contracts by 2006.

Bréchot, a hepatitis specialist who took charge of INSERM in February 2001, has already reduced the mandate of the agency's laboratories from 12 to 8 years, with an evaluation every four years. He says that he is now looking at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a model, and wants to start discussions about creating national “institutes without walls” for cancer, infectious diseases, cardiovascular research, and rare diseases and medical genetics. These would promote more efficient collaboration between researchers from INSERM and other research agencies, he says.

Bréchot's actions could pave the way for a much broader reform of biomedical research in France. The idea of a single, NIH-type agency for life sciences has been talked about in France for more than 20 years. Bréchot believes that the time is ripe for action, and plans to talk to colleagues at other research agencies about the project's feasibility. He says that if the idea is well received, a new agency could see the light of day within four years.

A 1998 attempt to reform INSERM was shelved after opposition from researchers' unions (see Nature 395, 630; 199810.1038/27050). This time the unions, although they accept some of Bréchot's arguments, have accused him of not making sufficient use of INSERM's consultative bodies before making decisions.

But Philippe Kourilsky, director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, which hosts many INSERM researchers, says Bréchot deserves scientists' support. “Researcher mentality has evolved, and the best aren't interested in a job for life any more,” he says.