Experienced Institution, Capable of Innovating
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Maxime Molina, you currently preside over the board of the Foundation for Medical Research. This is an old institution, formally established in 1967, although its history dates back to 1947. Can you introduce us to the foundation?
Maxime Molina: The Foundation for Medical Research (FRM) has a long history but has never stopped renewing itself. It was born in 1947 around great medical figures, Jean Dausset, Jean Bernard, Jean Hamburger, then Claudine Escoffier-Lambiotte, a doctor and journalist, with the ambition to support excellent medical research. But what strikes me when looking at its journey is its ability to keep moving. At each period, the foundation has been able to adapt its modes of action, its priorities, and its tools. That’s why it remains today a reference institution.
The FRM occupies a unique place in the French landscape. We are neither a public organization, nor a laboratory, nor an institute focused on a single pathology, nor even a foundation attached to a company. This position gives us a form of freedom and agility. It allows us to finance projects that involve some risk, more emerging projects, less established ones, sometimes more difficult to fit into the traditional framework of public funding. This is, in a way, where our modernity lies: in our ability to support new research, accompany disruptions, and encourage approaches that can transform knowledge or practices.
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The major public programs fund well-structured projects, whereas you can intervene where there is still uncertainty, where a project doesn’t fit the criteria of public calls.
Exactly. There is firstly a complementary role because we co-fund projects supported by ANR, universities, laboratories, and sometimes other institutions. But there is also a role of impulsion. We can identify a topic that we consider crucial for the future and build a call that will shake things up.
This is where our role becomes strategic. A foundation like ours can help create a scientific community around an issue that is not yet well-structured. We can also pave the way, create dynamics, foster connections between disciplines or teams that may not have met otherwise.
Facing Public Health Challenges: Four Strategic Axes
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What are the main axes you have chosen in your strategic plan?
We wanted to identify some strong priorities, both because they correspond to major public health issues and because they require further scientific advances that have not been sufficiently explored.
- The first axis, which is major for us, concerns the link between environment and health.
When we talk about the environment, we take it in a broad sense: pollution, of course, but also nutrition, noise, artificial light, exposure to certain products, pesticides, lifestyles, social conditions of existence. All these factors have an impact on health, but this impact is still imperfectly understood. If we want to progress, we need to consider different perspectives. That’s why we launched a call for projects asking teams to form real consortia combining biology and human and social sciences.
This requirement was quite unprecedented. We asked for both biologists and, depending on the projects, psychologists, economists, demographers, lawyers, or other specialists. At first, few teams applied because this way of working together was not yet fully established. Then, gradually, the community organized itself. Today, the number of applications has increased significantly, showing that a real field has been structured. This is a good example of what a foundation can do: not only fund but also help create a collective dynamic.
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This axis is emblematic of your ability to break down silos.
Yes, and it is absolutely essential. Some health issues, especially in this priority area for us, can no longer be addressed solely from a strictly biomedical perspective. When we work on the impact of the environment, we must also consider social inequalities, territorial differences, dietary practices, housing conditions, gender differences. It is not the same to live in a rural environment or near a highly trafficked road. If we do not take into account this complexity, we miss a significant part of the problem.
