INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA SANTE ET DE LA RECHERCHE MEDICALE

Their core work

INSERM is France's national biomedical research agency, equivalent in scale and mission to the US National Institutes of Health. It conducts fundamental and clinical research across the full spectrum of human health — from neuroscience and brain mapping to infectious disease response, cancer biology, and gene therapy. With over 400 H2020 projects and EUR 317M in EC funding, INSERM operates as a backbone institution for European health research, contributing deep scientific expertise, clinical trial infrastructure, and access to France's hospital-university network. Its work spans from molecular-level discovery (omics, biomarkers, transcriptomics) to large-scale research infrastructure like the EBRAINS brain simulation platform.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In the early H2020 period (2014–2018), INSERM balanced two major streams: emergency infectious disease response (Ebola vaccine development and diagnostics) and foundational neuroscience (brain reconstruction, simulation, and neuroinformatics). By the later period (2019–2022), the infectious disease emergency work wound down, and neuroscience expanded into applied directions — cognition, cognitive architecture, connectome mapping, and the EBRAINS research infrastructure. Simultaneously, microbiome research and multi-omics approaches gained prominence, signaling a shift toward systems-level understanding of disease.

INSERM is moving from disease-specific research toward integrated computational platforms (EBRAINS, HPC-based simulation) and systems biology approaches (omics, microbiome), positioning itself as a research infrastructure provider for the next generation of European health science.

How they like to work

INSERM operates as both a consortium leader and a deeply embedded partner — coordinating 166 projects while participating in 185 others, showing versatility rather than a fixed role preference. With 2,152 unique consortium partners across 88 countries, it functions as a mega-hub in European research networking, connecting institutions far beyond its French base. Its high third-party involvement (67 projects) also indicates that many affiliated labs and hospital units contribute specialized expertise through INSERM's umbrella structure.

INSERM maintains one of the largest collaboration networks in H2020, working with 2,152 distinct partner organizations across 88 countries — spanning well beyond Europe into Africa, Asia, and the Americas, particularly for infectious disease and global health initiatives.

What sets them apart

INSERM's distinguishing strength is its dual nature: it combines the scale of a national research agency (400+ projects, hundreds of research units embedded in French hospitals and universities) with the agility to coordinate rapid-response clinical trials, as demonstrated during the Ebola crisis. Unlike single-university research groups, INSERM can mobilize cross-disciplinary teams — from molecular biologists to computational neuroscientists to clinical trialists — under one institutional framework. For consortium builders, partnering with INSERM effectively opens a door to France's entire biomedical research ecosystem.

Highlights from their portfolio

• EBOVAC2
  Largest single project at EUR 15.6M — INSERM coordinated Phase II clinical trials for a prophylactic Ebola vaccine, demonstrating capacity to lead high-stakes, multi-site clinical development.
• HNN 2.0
  Unusual for INSERM — a Health NCP support project focused on mentoring, brokerage events, and networking, revealing an institutional role in shaping EU health research policy and access.
• CorticALS
  EUR 1.5M ERC-funded project rethinking ALS from a cortical perspective, representative of INSERM's strength in turning fundamental neuroscience into therapeutic strategy.