Founded in 1964, Inserm (French national institute of health and medical research) is a public scientific and technological institute that operates under the joint authority of the French Ministries of Health and Research. Its mission is to facilitate the exchange between basic, clinical, therapeutic and public health research leveraging on its scientific expertise in several fields and covering a very large spectrum of human diseases.

The Vaccine Research Institute (VRI) Inserm U955 was created in 2011, to pursue the HIV vaccine program of the ANRS (French National Agency of Research on HIV and hepatitis). The VRI is a network of national and international clinical and research teams sharing the goal to develop innovative therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines and tools to analyse biological responses to immunotherapies and vaccines. The ultimate mission of the VRI is to conduct research to accelerate the development of an effective vaccine against HIV/AIDS and (re)emerging infectious diseases.

For its activities, Inserm U955-VRI has innovative cutting-edge technologies to perform key cellular analyses (T cell phenotype, multiplex cytokine measurement, in vitro functional assays, cell sorting, epimax technology), NGS of transcriptome, single cell, B and T-cells repertoire analyses and has access to different types of cohorts, including a kidney transplant patient cohort.