About the GIMI

Presentation

The GIMI Genomic and Immunotherapy Medical Institute was created in 2016 by the CHU of Dijon Burgundy, the CHRU of Besançon, the Centre Georges François Leclerc and the Burgundy Franche-Comté Blood Bank (Etablissement Français de Sang), with the aim to make genomic medicine a clinical reality for patients with cancer, rare disease and common diseases.

These establishments are organized to federate their resources thus making it possible to:

• respond to the biomedical challenges of genomic medicine,
• make available to other hospital establishments tools to optimize the diagnosis and the management of rare disease and develop treatments in oncology and immuno-oncology,
• propose a platform for diagnosis and translational research implicated in the processing of these data with the aim to promote innovation in the field of biomarkers and of targeted therapies.

Why a genomic medicine and immunotherapy institute?

The deployment of genomic medicine is a major public health issue because it is revolutionizing healthcare trajectories, and thus the organization of public health. Thanks to genome sequencing in routine practice, a growing number of patients affected by rare diseases or cancers will benefit from personalized diagnostic and therapeutic management. Treatments will be linked to the genetic characteristics of the tumor, the constitutional genetic characteristics of the patient and the ability of the patient to develop an anti-tumor immune response.

In parallel, immunotherapy and targeted therapies are revolutionizing the management of cancers with treatments that are becoming effective in most diseases, but whose place in the oncological therapeutic arsenal will require personalized strategies. The development of immunotherapy is also a challenge in the modern genomic era. Indeed, the development of biomarkers is a major pharmacoeconomic undertaking to improve the identification of diseases and eligible patients, and to adapt treatments.