Purpose-driven approach

The role of clinical trials and diagnostics took center stage during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the crucial role clinical pathology plays in establishing fast, reliable diagnoses for human health on a global scale. It was a modern example of just how essential companies who provide such services are to the health and wellbeing of people around the world.

One such company, which has been providing potentially life-saving diagnostic services and applying its extensive expertise in clinical pathology for the last half century, is Cerba HealthCare.

Innovation has always been at the core of the French company, which was founded on the American model in 1967 and specialized at the time in sophisticated clinical pathology analyses for public and private laboratories. Since then, Cerba HealthCare has expanded exponentially in scope and expertise, and has become one of the leading clinical research and diagnostics companies in Europe and Africa.

“Translated from French, ‘Cerba’ actually stands for the Center of Study and Research in Applied Biology,” says Cerba Healthcare CEO Emmanuel Ligner. “The company has grown into an organization with over 15,000 professional staff that provides service diagnosis, prevention and precision medicine to more than 50 million patients.”

Investing in health

Cerba Healthcare is equipped to facilitate extremely specialized analysis and carry out advanced clinical trials to the benefit of both patients and medical professionals.

“We’re at the early stage of connecting with pharma and biotech to assist in the advancement and acceleration of life-changing therapeutics,” Ligner says. “This means having a very early understanding of a disease and knowing how to treat that disease to assist pharma and biotech and improve the lives of millions of patients.”

The company is committed to two fundamental convictions: the first is to maintain a strong link between its business and its values, and the second is to ensure their work is fundamentally based on solid scientific evidence.

To this end, it has always invested significantly in the professional development of its employees as well as the wider medical community. Its founding of the Institut Cerba, an endowment fund designed to promote and develop solidarity and citizen health actions worldwide, works to improve access to health care for the most disadvantaged people.

“There’s a huge amount of new technology coming out every year so we constantly need to invest,” Ligner says. “Which is why we’ve just opened a brand new €100 million investment [US$110.3 million] site near Paris that is now the largest clinical pathology platform in Europe.”

He says partnerships are key to achieving success in the diagnostics industry.

“Our environment is so dynamic around innovation that what worked in the past will not work in the future,” he says. “This is why I firmly believe that we need a collaborative approach to advance diagnosis and health.”

Cerba HealthCare partners with governments in France and Africa to provide diagnostic opportunities on national scales.

“Among others, we have an important partnership with the French government, for example, where we do colon cancer prevention screening for the entire population,” he explains.

“We also have a relationship with a group of South African pathologists with whom we share know-how so that they serve the local area to make a wide impact on public health.”

Sense of purpose

Ligner joined Cerba HealthCare as CEO in March 2024 and brought with him a wealth of experience, having worked in C-suite roles in Japan and the United Kingdom for some of the biggest names in the industry over the course of his career.

“After 20 years at GE Healthcare and Danaher Corporation, I was looking for a new challenge. I was attracted to Cerba because I liked the fact that diagnostics is a service industry and works very closely with the patient,” he explains.

“This proximity to the patient is something that’s very important to me, and diagnostics really is at the heart of the human being, spanning as it does from the very beginning of life to the end.”

It was also an opportunity for Ligner to return home to France after many years living and working abroad.

“I felt it was time to come back to my home country and see how I could help this really incredible company to develop and move to the next chapter,” he enthuses.

“But whichever country I work in, there’s no better industry for me. And I lead with a very strong sense of purpose.

“There’s nothing better than waking up each morning and saying, ‘What are we doing? Well, we’re just helping millions of patients’.”