[Prevention of iatrogenic risk and screening of chronic kidney disease].

Ten percent of the world's population is affected by chronic kidney disease that can lead to kidney failure. In France, nearly three million people are concerned, half of whom are undiagnosed, 85,000 people are on dialysis or waiting for a kidney transplant. Each year, 11,000 new diagnoses of severe renal failure are made, one third of which had not been treated before.

Translational research in immune and inflammatory diseases; what are the challenges, expected advances, and innovative therapies?

Despite very different aetiologies and clinical expressions, advancing knowledge in the physiopathology and treatment of immune and inflammatory diseases (IID) prompts us to consider them as a whole. These are chronic, often incapacitating and painful illnesses that progress and destroy organs. Management by discipline too often leads to erroneous diagnoses and sometimes inappropriate treatment.

[French biomedical competitiveness clusters: opportunities for public-private partnerships].

A "competitive cluster" is a partnership between businesses, research units and training centers, working together to generate synergies for innovative projects in a particular geographic area. Since 2005, the first five calls for cluster projects have led to the funding of 645 R&D projects involving 13,000 researchers. Together, the R&D expenditure of these projects has so far totaled nearly Euro 3.

Angiotensin-I-converting enzyme insertion/deletion polymorphism and high urinary albumin concentration in French Type 2 diabetes patients.

Aims: Family-based studies suggest a genetic basis for nephropathy in Type 2 diabetes. The angiotensin-I-converting enzyme (ACE) gene is a candidate gene for Type 1 diabetes nephropathy. We assessed the association between high urinary albumin concentration and ACE insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism, in French Type 2 diabetes patients.