The Lille Center of Excellence for Neurodegenerative Diseases - LiCEND
The LiCEND : A Lille biomedical research center on neurodegenerative diseases, recognized as an centre of excellence by international experts.
The LiCEND (for Lille Center of Excellence for Neurodegenerative Disorders) was identified as one of the seven French “Center of Excellence in Neurodegeneration” by the French government in 2015 after a competitive selection process with international expertise. The LiCEND, regrouping top-notch clinical and research experts of the Lille University Hospital, the University of Lille and the Pasteur Institute of Lille was integrated to the International CoEN Network.
Worldwide, biomedical progresses are mainly created in “Centers of Excellence”: with a sufficient critical mass, high visibility and high-level expertises, such centers can attract high skills talents, create strong collaborations with high-quality academic and industrial partners, run large-scale clinical trials, …
With the CoEN Label attributed by AVIESAN, the LiCEND is recognized as a major international actor of innovation in research, care and education on neurodegenerative diseases. It is actively collaborating with its French and international counterparts to propose break-through researches and clinical projects to improve treatments and clinical care, to improve health professionals’ training and to enlarge patients and general audience’s knowledge on the challenges and burdens of the neurodegenerative diseases.
Our missions
The LiCEND center of excellence has four main missions:
- To strenghten the research continuum existing between pre-clinical and clinical teams in Lille. It includes fostering bridges between basic, clinical and Human & Social Sciences on topics such as how to facilitate the patient’s first steps into the disease, how to better assess patient’s behavioural and cognitive skills, how to optimize the social and clinical care pathways, and how to reduce the disease socio-economical and financial cost of the neurodegenerative diseases;
- The different CoEN wil also promote cross-sharing of their competencies and experiences to improve diagnosis and care of the neurodegenerative diseases;
- Accelerate the Knowledge and technology transfert toward the private sector using the expertise of local technology transfert agencies (EURASANTE, “Nutrition Health Longevity” cluster,…) and the Centre of Clinical Investigation (CHU Lille) for the clinical trial expertise;
- Strenghen and diversify the teaching on Neurodegenerative diseases toward health students and professionals. We have also the mission to attract students of other specialities toward research on neurodegenerative diseases in order to create a multidisciplinary pool of expertise. this measure is particularly aimed to reinforce medical doctors rseearch involvement, to train biology and health student to the economic world and start-up creation, to attract student from mathematics, pysics, computer sciences, human and social sciences (psychology, cognitive sciences, sociology, ethics, language sciences,…) toward the topic of neurodegenerative diseases.
