Pittsburgh-Paris Partnership: Pitt Medicine to Collaborate with French Research Institutes

Pitt School of Medicine Signs Collaborative Agreement with World-Renowned French Research Institutions

The agreement will enable researchers of all four institutions to cooperate on fundamental research, development of novel therapeutics, and clinical trials, with an initial focus on ophthalmology, vision and neuroscience. Along with joint research, the agreement also emphasizes exchange of academic personnel, joint academic conferences, and exchange of scientific, educational and scholarly materials.

The agreement, signed on July 12 at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., highlights an important partnership between Pitt and the French institutions that was spurred by the recent recruitment of José-Alain Sahel, M.D., one of the world’s top experts in retinal diseases, as the chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at Pitt’s School of Medicine, director of the UPMC Eye Center, and the Eye and Ear Foundation Chair of Ophthalmology. Sahel retained his connections to Paris as the founder and director of the Institut de la Vision in Paris and as a professor at the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie of the Sorbonne Universités (which co-incidentally also is referred to by the acronym UPMC), a top ranked medical school and the largest scientific and medical complex in France.

Inserm, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, is the only public research institution solely focused on human health and medical research in France and a leading medical research agency worldwide; and CNRS, the French National Center for Scientific Research is the largest governmental research organization in France and the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.

“This agreement will further strengthen the robust scientific and educational partnerships between Pittsburgh and Paris, bringing to bear our outstanding intellectual capacities to address some of the most significant diseases that lead to blindness and vision impairment through basic and translational research,” said Sahel

“Taking on an immense challenge like the quest to cure blindness requires that we ...

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