Three INBSs, FRISBI (Integrated Structural Biology), Phenomin (Mouse phenogenomics) and FBI (Bio-Imaging), laureates of the “Programme Investissement d’Avenir” in 2011, previously decided to explore possible common activities (see article). The idea, that our INBSs could better interact, think of common projects or services and organize joint actions, was now extended at the FBI Annual Meeting (17th- 18th of September, Institut Curie, Paris) during a dedicated “Inter INBS” session. Bruno Klaholz (IGBMC, Illkirch), the Coordinator of FRISBI, briefly presented the diverse activity of its infrastructure, including operational modality and more importantly, complementary or common technological approaches with FBI. Possible transverse activities aimed at integrating multi-scales data appear obvious. This should lead to common actions notably with the WP1c (CLEM/super-CLEM), WP1a (High Resolution) and WP4 (Bioimage Informatics-IPDM). In her talk, Emilie Audran (IGBMC, Illkirch), explains the mission of Phenomin. To improve the knowledge of the mammalian genome, identify and understand its variations and discover new opportunities for therapies and drugs. Imaging is an obvious technology in this context, and clear connections are possible with the FBI WP1d (New contrast and In-Depth Imaging). Beside these technological and scientific common interests, these three INBS also share concerns about their future and sustainability, beyond the end of the PIA program. Next step is now to develop common programs and actions as defined by the obvious overlaps and complementarity above.

The 1st of July, the national coordination was invited to give a general presentation of FBI to the Advisory Committee of the ITMO-TS (Technologies pour la Santé). A number of members of the INBS FLI (France Life Imaging) were present. Following the presentation both parties agreed that we should finally start to engage common “building sites”. A first one will be a common meeting held in Paris the 30th of September, between FBI, FLI and l’IBF (Institut Français de Bioinformatique (another INBS of the PIA 2012) which topic will be the organization of a more general workshop on:

1) Which IT infrastructures for Imaging Data?
2) Ethical (and security) issues in the context of data management, sharing, dissemination
3) Business Plan prospective and PIA 2016/H2020 common actions.

The development of an “out-reaching” strategy, is a strong recommendation of our international Scientific Advisory Board. The last year and an half, FBI was thus particularly active in promoting the French BioImaging Community and in particular FBI activities to a broad scientific community (FEBS-EMBO satellite symposium, SBCF meeting, in many international conferences, organized or co-organized by FBI …). Next date in the FBI agenda, FBI will be presented to the scientific Board of the ITMO-BCDE (Biologie Cellulaire , du Développement et Evolution) at Aviesan.