Author Archives: Hervé Affagard

Innovating in France’s Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region

  Lyonbiopole is a French “bio-cluster” based in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region surrounding Lyon (Figure 1). The cluster supports ambitious projects and companies in the broad health industry, counting more than 200 members including Lyonbiopole’s four founders: Sanofi Pasteur (the vaccines division of multinational pharmaceutical company Sanofi), bioMérieux (known worldwide for in vitro diagnostics and microbiological testing), Merial (an animal-health company that merged recently with Boehringer Ingelheim), and Becton Dickinson (supplier of flow cytometers, reagents, tools, and services). The region also is…