In accordance with the EC Treaty rules on state aid, the European Commission has approved aid worth €90 million to be granted by France to the R&D programme “ADNA” covering the development of personalised medicine for infectious diseases, cancer and genetic diseases. The proposed aid should bring significant and positive benefits in terms of knowledge dissemination and the improvement of health, while having a limited effect on competition. This type of programme is not generated spontaneously by the market because of the high risks involved.

A large proportion of the results will be made available to any interested parties, and most beneficiaries of the aid have only small shares of the relevant markets. The Commission has therefore concluded that the aid is compatible with the EU's Research, Development and Innovation Framework (see IP/06/1600 and MEMO/06/441).

EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said: “I am delighted to be able to approve aid for the ADNA programme, which takes a new approach to treating cancer and genetic diseases and which would not be launched without public support. This is a good example of aid underpinning research and development without generating disproportionate distortions of competition.”

France intends to make available €90 million worth of aid in the form of grants and repayable advances to BioMérieux and Transgene, both of which form part of the Mérieux-Alliance holding company, and to six other partners including Généthon. The eligible costs for calculating the authorised aid ceiling amount to €202 million. The programme forms part of the aid scheme set up by the Agence française de l'innovation industrielle (French Industrial Innovation Agency, which has in the meantime merged with OSEO, the French state-owned bank for SMEs) and authorised by the Commission on 19 July 2006 (see IP/06/1020). It was notified on an individual basis because of the large amount of aid involved.

The aim of ADNA is to develop personalised medicine in order to provide individual treatment and clinical monitoring to patients suffering from infectious diseases, cancer and genetic diseases. It combines diagnosis and treatment. The programme will develop new in vitro diagnostic technologies using two automated platforms, EasyCHIP and EasyGEN, that make complex analyses possible for diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic monitoring. ADNA will also develop the use of biomarkers, which are measurable characteristics that are analysed by taking biological samples from patients, making it possible to distinguish between a normal medical condition and a pathological condition and to identify the response to a particular treatment. In terms of therapy, ADNA is designed to develop two vaccines for breast cancer and persistent human papilloma virus (HPV) infections, as well as genetic treatments for rare genetic diseases.

In weighing up the positive and negative aspects of the aid from the point of view of the rules of the Research, Development and Innovation Framework, the Commission examined the programme to see whether it would, in particular, make a significant contribution to improving the entire health chain associated with cancer and orphan diseases. If successful, the research conducted under ADNA will have major implications for other diseases and treatments. The beneficiaries of the aid will not be able to appropriate for themselves all the results of the research since a large proportion of the results will be made available to any interested parties.

The Commission considers that the planned aid will encourage the beneficiaries to launch the ADNA programme, something they would not do without public support as the programme faces major market failures, with firms reluctant to invest because of the significant risks inherent in a new approach which combines diagnosis with treatment. BioMérieux has only a very small share of the molecular biology market (roughly 2%), and there is currently no therapeutic vaccine on the market. Moreover, the platforms and therapeutic vaccines developed will always be combined with other methods of diagnosis and treatment, and this reduces the risk of crowding out other investors.

The Commission therefore concluded that there was no risk of the aid distorting competition in a way contrary to the general interest. The non-confidential version of the decision will be made available in the State Aid Register under the case number N 709/2007 on the DG Competition website once any confidentiality issues have been resolved.