The application for approval as a research centre was submitted in May 1995 and approval was obtained on 17 October 1995. Staff recruitment began in May 1995 with a full-time secretary and nurse.
A large amount of medical equipment from the coordinating and investigating doctor's own funds was made available to the CIC-P, on its premises, from August 1995.
From May 1995 to October 1995, before obtaining approval as a research centre, the activities of the CIC-P consisted mainly of setting up the team and training the staff in Good Clinical Practice, in the conditions for protecting persons involved in biomedical research and in computer procedures. During this same period, budgetary procedures were studied with the administration of the CHU and INSERM. Security procedures were put in place and tested. The CIC-P was promoted to the clinical services of the CHU, the INSERM units and several pharmaceutical industry laboratories thanks to the design of a brochure specific to the Nancy CIC-P, which was widely distributed to all the partners, to the organisation of several open days intended for the clinicians of the CHU and the INSERM researchers of Nancy and to numerous personal contacts with the members of the CHU's Commission Médicale d'Etablissement (Medical Commission) and Commission de Recherche Clinique (Clinical Research Commission), and with the members of the Faculty Council and the University Council.
With the agreement of the Technical Committee which was set up and whose first meeting took place on 5 July 1995, several draft protocols were finalised. Finally, during the entire period of waiting for approval as a research site, clinical research with direct individual benefit, previously undertaken in the respective clinical departments of the coordinating doctor and the delegated doctor, could be continued with the staff of the CIC-P. From the end of October 1995, the CIC-P's own investigations began.
Since 1995, 140 protocols have been carried out, including 11121 patients and healthy volunteers. 324 international original publications have been published and 236 oral communications have been made.
