2012 CNRS Innovation Medal laureate: Patrick Couvreur

Patrick Couvreur, professor at the University Paris-Sud at the Institut Galien Paris Sud in Châtenay-Malabry and holder of the chair of technological innovation at the Collège de France (2009-2010), received the 2012 CNRS medal for innovation. As a medical nanotechnology specialist, he conducted research that has led him to design new drug delivery and delivery systems for cancer treatments, certain infectious diseases and neurodegenerativediseases. He is the author of numerous publications and holds about fifty patents. He talks about one of his team's research projects on the development of multifunctional nanoparticles. To treat a tumor in mice, he uses nanoparticles of iron oxide (sensitive to magnetic fields) integrated into a drug carrying nanovector. An extracorporeal magnetic field is positioned near the tumour, which attracts the nanovector and concentrates it in the diseased tissues. In addition, the treatment process can be monitored by medical imaging. This process is referred to as "nanothera(g)nosis".