Institut de la Vision

A Center for integrated research on eye diseases

Conceived as a place of gathering and exchanges, the Institut de la Vision enables the sharing of ideas and skills, the emergence of new questions and facilitates the delicate process of translating fundamental discoveries into new treatments. In 2018 it was evaluated by an international commission of experts (HCERES) as a world leading research centre, which can rightly be considered as the first vision research centre in the world. See here the HCERES evaluation report.

The Institute's goal is to discover, test and develop treatments and technological innovations of tomorrow in order to prevent or limit visual impairment and to improve the autonomy and the quality of life of patients.

It harbors, aside from the research center, a clinical investigation center and a rare disease reference center. These activities are developed in the legal framework of the Foundation Voir & Entendre.

Research

The building of 6000 m2 houses more than 15 research teams (Sorbonne University - Inserm - CNRS) working on different eyesight problems: retina imaging, AMD (Age-related macular degeneration), glaucoma, diabetic retinopathies, retinitis pigmentosa, etc. Teams from the Paris Observatory, the Pasteur Institute, the CHI Créteil, the Institut Langevin and the European Institute for Theoretical Neuroscience also take part in the project.

Alongside these teams, companies settled in the Institute develop research projects in the field of vision: drug discovery, imaging, surgery, new technologies, etc.

The latest developments in analyzing, exploring and imaging are available for researchers and industry partners, and are grouped together on about twelve technological platforms dedicated to: tissue and cell imaging by confocal microscopy, adaptive optics, full field optical coherence tomography, functional explorations, DNA-collection, transcriptome and proteome analysis, bioinformatics, behavioral tests, patch clamp study of ionic channels, two-photon imaging and utilization of optogenetic tools, preclinical studies on non human primate, development of animal models, genetic therapy approaches, pharmacological and light toxicity studies, high-throughput screening.

Researchers and industry partners also benefit from the functional evaluation platform in the Clinical Investigation Centre of the Quinze-Vingts Hospital (CIC).

Treatments

The scientists of the Institut de la Vision work hand in hand with the clinicians of the Clinical Investigation Centre (CIC) of the Quinze-Vingts hospital.

The CIC, opened in 2004 upon appoval by Inserm and the Directorate of Hospitalisation and Care Management, is the only Clinical Investigation Center dedicated exclusively to ophthalmology in France. It also shelters the Reference Centre for Genetic Retinal Dystrophies.

More than fifty studies (phases I to III clinical trials, physiological and physiopathological studies, etc.) are at present in progress on AMD, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetic retinopathies, retinal vein occlusions, artificial retina, glaucoma and high resolution imagery of the retina.

Scientists and clinicians also work in close association with partner hospitals: Rothschild Ophthalmological Foundation, AP-HP (Lariboisière, Pitié-Salpétrière hospital) and CHI Créteil in particular.