In a highly competitive call part of the National France 2030 Plan, France-BioImaging was selected to receive special funding to upgrade its technology offer and implement tomorrow’s imaging technological and methodological developments.

Securing Next-Generation Instruments for Biological Imaging 

In recent decades, innovations in microscopy have led to technological revolutions that had strong impacts in important societal fields such as agronomy, marine biology and human health. Life scientists need to have easy access to these technologies and France-BioImaging, with 30 top-notched facilities and thousands of users, is best placed to develop, implement and give access to the latest imaging technologies to the national and international community. 

In 2024, the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research allocated 80 M€ for a call dedicated to the National Research Infrastructures in Biology and Health (Programme Investissement d’Avenir)  to keep their research and technologies at the highest level of excellence.

France BioImaging was a laureate of the call with its project Biological Imaging Next-Generation Instruments (BIOGENI).

In this project, 1.9 M€ will be invested to rejuvenate and upgrade existing technologies and 7.3 M€ will serve to implement new technologies, paving the way for the use of next-generation imaging methods by our users.

The BIOGENI project will both strengthen the visibility and attractivity of France-BioImaging, and provide our researchers access to the most powerful and needed imaging technologies. This includes new technologies in super-resolution and single molecule tracking, multiscale correlative microscopy, light sheet microscopies, high-content and multiplexed imaging, new contrasts and preclinical microscopy. The equipment purchased thanks to BIOGENI will be complemented by new human resources dedicated to data management and image analysis, provided by the Partner Institutions of the infrastructure. This will enable proper data management and analysis, as many of the new technologies deliver very large datasets requiring dedicated tools.

2023 and 2024 were busy years for France-BioImaging. The infrastructure not only made a winning grant proposal to ensure the upgrade of existing technologies and the implementation of new ones, but successfully passed the evaluation of the 2020-2024 period, ensuring allocation of its running budget for the next few years.