Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet LipidGlia (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

European population is rapidly aging. While it was commonly believed that brain aging leads to neuronal loss, recent studies found that instead the volume of white matter (WM) decreases and WM lesions develop with age. WM degeneration is also a hallmark of multiple neurological disorders including Alzheimer’s disease or multiple sclerosis. Understanding cellular responses to WM injury is therefore critical for design of regenerative therapies of central nervous system (CNS). The European population is also increasingly overweight. Obesity is associated with higher risk of multiple sclerosis and other neurological diseases and leads to systemic low-grade inflammation modulating functions of the immune cells. While this paradigm has been extensively studied in peripheral tissues, effect of diet on microglial states in CNS is poorly understood. I hypothesise that high-fat diet disrupts metabolic response of microglia to WM injury and impairs regeneration. My proposal aims to identify diet-altered microglial pathways and how to target them for promoting recovery after injury. For this goal, I will use the single cell and spatial transcriptomics to characterize in detail how WM injury and obesity alters cellular phenotypes. However, currently no method can link the metabolic state of the cell with its transcriptome. I will establish method that combines metabolic measurements with single cell RNA-Seq in mouse models of high-fat diet and demyelination. In addition, I propose to integrate spatial transcriptomics with electron microscopy as an innovative approach to visualize lipid-loaded microglia and link their morphology to the transcriptomic state. This project will provide critical new knowledge of mechanisms of WM repair. The fellowship will allow me to become expert in applying and developing genomic technologies to devastating neurological disorders, and deepen leadership and management skills to achieve my career goal of becoming independent investigator.

Mots clés : microglia, genomics, white matter, myelin, metabolism, lipid droplet, obesity, rna seq, multiple sclerosis, spatial transcriptomics, electron microscopy, cholesterol, neuroinflammation

Participants :
- University Hospital Bonn (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 173847.36 €
Projet NanoNAD (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Metabolic decline may be a critical, and treatable, pathogenic component of glaucoma. Glaucoma is one of the most prevalent neurodegenerations worldwide, affecting 80 million patients worldwide. There are no neuroprotective therapies. We have discovered metabolic and mitochondrial dysfunction in the retina and optic nerve which occur prior to neurodegeneration in glaucoma. One of these early changes is a decline in the important metabolite nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), which critically regulates neuronal survival in glaucoma. Preventing NAD decline pharmacologically or through targeted gene therapies robustly prevents neurodegeneration. We are now actively generating novel NAD-generating compounds based on our initial studies. Neuronal NAD production is an ideal target for neuroprotective drug discovery for neuroprotection in glaucoma and other axon degenerations. The goal of this research project is to develop clinically translatable nano-enabled neuroprotective strategies for glaucoma. I will focus on these novel strategies involving compounds that increase NAD metabolism developed by the Williams lab and formulated in nanocarriers by the Sotiriou lab. These will be translated into practical, effective agents that provide long-term effects in the retina. The current challenges we face are: (1) ocular delivery without toxicity, (2) high pay-load delivery, (3) delivery with sustained release. To overcome these, the Williams and Sotiriou labs will collaborate, where I will: (1) rationally design biocompatible nanocarriers by flame spray pyrolysis, (2) load these nanocarriers with novel NAD-generating drugs, (3) evaluate their NAD-generating capacity in vivo and the resulting neuroprotective effects. With this project, I will combine the expertise from the two laboratories to facilitate the integration of visual neuroscience, pharmacology, and nanoscale drug delivery systems to develop clinically translatable therapies for ophthalmic disease.

Mots clés : glaucoma, retinal ganglion cells, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide nad , mitochondrial metabolism, nanoparticle, drug delivery

Participants :
- Institut Karolinska (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 252180.0 €
Projet REJUVIMMUNE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Aging is a complex process, encompassing the decline numerous cell types and organs. In this regard, recent progress suggests that the hematopoietic system is particularly influential; as we age, hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) preferentially differentiate toward the myeloid lineage, thus losing their ability to regenerate fully functional blood tissue. Furthermore, a decline in the effector capacity of immune cells accounts for insufficient immunosurveillance of senescent cells, leading to their accumulation throughout the body. From a therapeutic perspective, the hematopoietic system is particularly malleable to rejuvenating interventions. In recent years, strategies of epigenetic reprogramming achieved through the transient expression of the Yamanaka factors Oct4-Sox2-Klf4 (OSK) and the facultative expression of c-Myc -referred to as partial reprogramming- has progressively garnered attention for its potential application in regenerative medicine. Their capacity to transiently push fate-committed cells back to their developmental program and to remove epigenetic marks of damage enhances the capacity of tissues to regenerate after injury in several preclinical models. However, it is poorly understood whether single-organ partial reprogramming affects other tissues and health span, without risks for secondary transformation, undermining the translational potential for humans. Across the REJUVIMMUNE project, I leverage on these limitations to develop unique tools –mRNA therapeutics and partial reprogramming mimicking cocktails (PRMCs)– for targeting partial reprogramming on HSCs (Objective 1) and elucidate cell intrinsic and extrinsic effects of OSK-rejuvenation on blood cells -including immune cells- and systemic aging, respectively (Objective 2). In summary, the strategies proposed in this action hold great potential to counteract hematopoietic senescence and mitigating age-associated decline in organismal function, enhancing health span and organismal resilience.

Mots clés : aging, hematopoietic system, partial reprogramming, rejuvenation, tissue regeneration, longevity, immune system

Participants :
- Institut Karolinska (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 252180.0 €
Projet SNPF (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

After ten years from the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN, which established the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics as the most accurate description of nature at its fundamental level, no direct sign of new physics (NP) beyond the SM has been observed. In order to make further progress in high-energy physics, it is necessary to improve the precision of theoretical SM predictions and search NP effects indirectly by looking for tiny discrepancies with experimental measurements. This proposal will make use of a combination of formal and numerical tools, in particular methods of numerical lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD), to achieve this aim in the context of flavour physics. Two projects are proposed, which have the common goal of improving the precision on theoretical predictions of relevant flavour observables and share the difficulty of being dominated by hadronic effects that require non-perturbative lattice calculations.  In the first project, I will study the leading electromagnetic and strong isospin breaking corrections to kaon semi-leptonic decays, providing a method to extract the relevant decay amplitudes from finite-volume (FV) Euclidean correlation functions evaluated on the lattice and computing analytically their FV dependence. This aims to determine the CKM matrix element Vus with sub-percent precision and hence to test the CKM matrix unitarity predicted by the SM. The goal of the second project is instead to obtain a first non-perturbative estimate of long-distance contributions to the mixing of neutral D mesons, which are dominant but poorly known, thus representing a limiting factor in the study of CP violation and NP effects in this process. This will be done by applying advanced reconstruction techniques to FV lattice spectral functions.  This proposal will have a relevant impact on flavour physics and phenomenology, delivering new conceptual and algorithmic methods which will provide the foundations for future scientific progress.

Mots clés : theoretical physics, lattice field theory, lattice qcd, flavour physics, qed, meson mixing, scientific computing

Participants :
- Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 210789.12 €
Projet NUTELAS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The study of exotic atomic nuclei with extreme proton to neutron asymmetry is one of the pillars of contemporary nuclear physics and the study of the evolution of fundamental nuclear properties across the nuclear chart is one of its key aspects. In the last decades, many experimental and theoretical efforts have been devoted to the study of the disappearance of shell closures, often accompanied by an increase of configuration mixing and collectivity, leading to the formation of islands of inversion, where ground-states are found to have a deformed structure. The experimental study of such regions is of crucial importance for our understanding of the low-lying mechanisms generating these drastic structural evolutions, which poses serious challenges to nuclear theories. Ground-state properties are known to be a very sensitive probes to the nuclear wave function and to provide stringent test to nuclear theories. The Collinear Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (CRIS) experiment is a cutting-edge experimental setup located at ISOLDE/CERN, that perform laser spectroscopy on radioactive atomes in order to extract ground state properties. The present project aims at pushing ground-state nuclear properties measurements into the region of the N=40 island of inversion and near 78Ni, in order to benchmark nuclear theories (shell model, density functional theory and ab-initio) and to shed light on the low-lying mechanism responsible for drastic structural evolutions. Among the objectives of the project is the implementation of a decay spectroscopy station at CRIS that will allow to combine decay and laser spectroscopy techniques. This will offer unique opportunities for nuclear structure studies in the 78Ni region and has the potential to lead to several crucial discoveries.

Mots clés : nuclear physics, nuclear structure, shell evolution, deformation, ground state properties, radioactive ion beams, laser spectroscopy, decay spectroscopy, shell model, ab initio

Participants :
- Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 210789.12 €
Projet ColdPbar (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The matter-antimatter asymmetry is a major unsolved problem in physics: Why do we live in a universe dominated by matter although physics tells us that equal amounts of matter and antimatter have been created at the Big Bang?  The AEgIS project at CERN studies this problem by measurements of antihydrogen. Just last year, AEgIS achieved the pulsed formation of antihydrogen and enters now a new era of antimatter research, measuring the gravitational acceleration of antihydrogen and forming new, more complex antiprotonic atoms for spectroscopic investigation.  However, the sensitivity of these measurements is limited by the thermal motion of antiprotons, in the case of pulsed formation of a neutral antihydrogen beam. The antiproton temperature could be lowered drastically by thermalization with laser-cooled ions. Laser-cooling, however, has never been realized with negative ions, as needed for cooling antiprotons, because almost no atomic anions do have strong optical transitions suitable for laser cooling.  The goal of this project is to demonstrate laser cooling of the diatomic carbon anion – making it the first negative ion and the first molecular ion to be laser cooled. To reach this challenging goal, we will use an interdisciplinary approach, making use of the complementary backgrounds of the applicant (molecular physics) and the host (elementary particle physics).  The impact of this project goes beyond antimatter research. Laser-cooled diatomic carbon anions can cool any other negative ion, thus enabling new experiments in atomic and molecular physics or physical chemistry. Furthermore, the transdisciplinary knowledge transfer between the host and the applicant, and the bridges built between atomic/molecular physics and antimatter research will lead to new research initiatives, keeping Europe at the forefront of this emerging, interdisciplinary field.

Mots clés : antimatter research, antihydrogen, laser cooling, sympathetic cooling, cold molecular ions

Participants :
- Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 210789.12 €
Projet EpiMetaPDO (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Cancer development is a convoluted biological process that reshapes cellular identity. Genetic mutations are crucial in driving such process, yet fail to fully explain metastatic transition—a critical step in cancer evolution. For this reason, reprogramming driven by non-mutational epigenetic changes is increasingly recognized as a potential mechanism by which cancer cells acquire metastatic properties. Despite the genetic heterogeneity, specific transcriptional programs are activated to promote the acquisition of such properties. Therefore, understanding the role of changes at the chromatin level in facilitating metastatic transitions becomes crucial. To address this, I will use patient-derived organoids (PDOs) generated from primary colon cancer and various metastatic sites. PDOs are an optimal model system available in the hosting laboratory, providing a platform for investigation and subsequent functional validation. The project’s first goal is to profile changes in histone modifications and in the enhancer interactome, in primary and metastasis PDOs. This will identify chromatin states transitions and cis-regulatory elements with a key relevance in metastatic progression and maintenance (Aim 1). Transcription factors (TFs) with potential regulatory roles in these processes will be identified by integrating chromatin accessibility data and performing footprinting analysis (Aim 2). Functional validation of candidate TFs will be conducted using CRISPR perturbations, combined with single-cell multi-omic readout and in-vitro assays to assess PDOs' fitness and invasiveness potential (Aim 3). Altogether, in this project we will employ a comprehensive approach to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the activation of pro-metastatic gene regulatory networks, providing insights into the epigenetic drivers of metastatic transitions.

Mots clés : metastasis patient derived organoids

Participants :
- IFOM (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 172750.08 €
Projet ECLIPSE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The need to mitigate the ecological effects of climate change is accelerating the development of renewable energy technologies. Floating photovoltaic systems (FPV) is an important advance of the energy industry and is spreading fast across the globe. A key challenge remains to ensure that climate mitigation strategies are not triggering novel, unexpected and counterproductive impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems that can counterbalance their ecological benefits. FPV can affect lakes’ ecosystem services through abrupt changes in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning through changes in abiotic conditions in lakes (e.g., light arrival, water mixing, oxygenation) that can ultimately alter the composition of plant and animal communities, with cascading effects on ecosystem functioning. To date, however, empirical assessments of these impacts are still lacking. ECLIPSE aims to provide an integrative assessment of the ecological impacts of FPV on lakes ecosystems by (1) measuring the in-situ impacts of FPV on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning; (2) experimentally quantifying the context-dependency of these effects; (3) predicting the impacts of FPV on lakes under climate change scenarios; and (4) providing evidence-based guidelines for FPV deployment. An innovative combination of methods will be used to quantify food web architecture (stable isotope analyses) and ecosystem functioning (lake metabolism and carbon balance) incorporating in situ lake monitoring, mesocosm experiments, and ecological modeling. ECLIPSE is highly innovative as it will answer an applied question with ecological and socio-economic implications providing fundamental knowledge on ecosystem responses to abrupt environmental changes.

Mots clés : floating solar, floatovoltaics, stable isotope analysis, gas fluxes, ecosystem metabolism, c cycling, food web, freshwater management

Participants :
- Université de Lancaster (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de Toulouse (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 275527.15 €
- Office français de la biodiversité (France) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes publics (hors enseignement & recherche), subvention : 0.0 €
Projet TinyTrend (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Preterm birth (<37 weeks' gestation) is the leading cause of death in children under the age of 5 worldwide, accounting for 900k neonatal deaths a year. Preterm birth rates vary widely within and between countries, with environmental causes of yet unclear aetiology suspected to be the main drivers. The main goal of TinyTrend is to reveal the role of environmental risk factors and inform risk-mitigation policies for preterm births by evaluating environmental policy changes in a quasi-experimental setting. This interdisciplinary project will devise a robust and novel methodology through embedding data science and artificial intelligence within an epidemiology framework to: 1) systematically identify policy changes targeting environmental factors, 2) evaluate their role on preterm birth rates in time and space (quasi-experimental framework), 3) draw causal inferences integrating original and previous evidence on the impact of these environmental factors on preterm births. The Experienced Researcher (ER) will advance his skills in environmental science, public health, epidemiology and informatics through high-calibre external and in-house training from the host institution. TinyTrend will leverage high-quality population-wide administrative health data from Lombardy (Italy), including 1M pregnancies for the 2010-2023 period, and generate a new FAIR dataset of policy changes. For the first time, the ER will combine both data sources in an interrupted time series analysis with control series to generate robust evidence on new environmental causes and their critical time windows for preterm births. TinyTrend will present a best practice template for other Italian regions to follow that is transferable to generate new insights into other diseases with a significant environmental component and elusive aetiology.


Participants :
- Human Technopole (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 172750.08 €
Projet TheCacaoWeb (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

West Africa produces approximately half of the cacao consumed worldwide, but yields are threatened by unsustainable farming practices and the impact of pests and diseases. It is thus urgent to develop sustainable alternatives that protect local biodiversity and enhance ecosystem services such as biological pest control. Trophic ecology research is necessary to understand the ecology of pest predators and how to enhance them, but there are still large knowledge gaps in cacao trophic webs. Mesopredatory arthropods have been rarely researched, despite being considerably more abundant and diverse than apex predators, whose effect on pests and cacao yield has been studied. TheCacaoWeb aims to address central knowledge gaps about the role of mesopredatory arthropods in biocontrol and cacao crop yield in Côte d’Ivoire, the largest cacao producer worldwide. Through a multi-factorial experiment and metabarcoding approaches, I will assess how the diversity and diet of mesopredatory arthropods changes when agroforests are managed with or without insecticides, and under the presence of different shade tree species. Through a secondment at the Swiss Ornithological Institute, I will be able to assess how insectivorous birds affect mesopredatory arthropods and their diets, and the consequences of these multi-trophic interactions for crop yield. This secondment will also allow me to work as a researcher outside academia. TheCacaoWeb will bridge key gaps in trophic ecology, while addressing pressing questions to enhance sustainable farming practices in the cacao field. I will share my results with stakeholders in Switzerland, Côte d’Ivoire, and other countries in West Africa, expanding my collaboration network and ensuring that my scientific advances impact practice. This project will position me as an independent tropical ecologist in Europe standing out for the ability to apply scientific advances to solve current problematics in tropical agriculture and biodiversity conservation.

Mots clés : agroecology, trophic ecology, biodiversity monitoring

Participants :
- Biopolis (Spain) (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 191343.12 €
- Schweizerische vogelwarte sempach (Suisse) — Partner, associated partner, Recherche, subvention : 0.0 €