Competitive clusters: results of the eighth call for projects

Since 2005 and the introduction of competitive clusters, 738 projects have received public funding. On July 29, 2009, the government announced the 93 new projects selected to benefit from public aid out of the 200 proposals submitted.

State aid amounts to 109 million euros, and local government bodies have indicated their intention to finance some of these projects together with the state, to the tune of nearly 62 million euros.

The projects come out of 48 competitive clusters and range from agriculture to transportation, ITC and the environment.

In the field of health and biotechnology, we could mention the Affinspi project from the Cancer-Bio-Health cluster, which develops products based on a new biomarker to improve cancer diagnosis. Another example, the AD-INOV project from the Nutrition Health Longevity cluster, which aims to identify new drugs that could change the course of Alzheimer’s disease and help preserve patients’ mental and intellectual functions.

The ninth call for projects will be issued in the Fall of 2009, and the results are expected in March 2010.