On 17 December 2015, the Institut d’Optique d’Aquitaine in Talence hosted the launch of the Lasers and Health Technology Alliance established within the framework of the 2015-2020 State-Region Projects Contract.

The Alliance brings together stakeholders in academic research, technology transfer and the industrial sector to work on projects in the areas of lasers and health.

Backed by a range of skills and facilities that is unrivalled in France and by a regional strategy seeking to develop a fully-fledged industrial sector in optics and lasers, the Alliance aims to focus on integrated programmes combining scientific, technological and industrial issues, and on furthering convergence between the efforts of academics and industry.

After presenting the background and objectives of the Alliance, the rest of the meeting was devoted to the “X-Ray Sources for Oncology” operation which currently comprises three programmes, each of them involving ALPhANOV:

•  LEAP, headed by Bordeaux University-CNRS with the CEA and ALPhANOV as partners: this programme aims to develop energy lasers in Aquitaine for high-average-power plasmas;
• Convergence, headed by ALPhANOV with the CELIA laboratory and Amplitude Laser Group as its initial partners: this is a collaborative R&D programme between research, technology transfer and industry;
• XPulse, headed by ALPhANOV with the CELIA laboratory, Institut Bergonié and Amplitude Laser Group as its initial partners: the purpose of this programme is the development of an X-ray laser mammography system for early breast cancer detection.