Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ResilMS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a prevalent demyelinating disease that primarily affects young adults. Current therapy for MS mainly focuses on immune suppression and alleviating inflammation. However, efforts to promote remyelination face challenges in clinical translation. Animal models of acute demyelination have demonstrated promising remyelination, primarily facilitated by newly generated oligodendrocytes. Nevertheless, the scenario in human MS differs, as the disease typically manifests in adulthood and the progression of lesions occurs over several decades. In the proposed project ResilMS, by using barcode based lineage tracing combined with ultra-depth single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, I will identify the molecular profiles of existing and newly generated oligodendrocytes at different stages of a mouse model induced with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). The aim is to comprehend how an oligodendroglial cell pool diversifies its subpopulations during prolonged disease challenge, and what are the unique molecular properties for resilient cells to maintain their ability to endure an adverse inflammatory environment and remyelinate. Further, I will perform a screen of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with risk and severity of MS that might affect genes related to the resilience of oligodendrocytes. To experimentally explore the effect of relevant SNPs, human oligodendrocyte cells (hOLGs) derived from pluripotent cells will be perturbed with CRISPR-based genetic modification and observed for cell profile and functional changes. The identified SNPs and resilience molecular pathways may play a critical role in disease progression for MS patients. By delving into the mechanisms of resilience of (re)myelinating cells in a long disease course, this project will provide valuable insights into MS-related genetic risk and protective factors, and potentially advance diagnostic and therapeutic approaches in MS research.

Mots clés : multiple sclerosis, remyelination, oligodendroglia, single nucleotide polymorphisms

Participants :
- Institut Karolinska (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 206887.68 €
Projet DDRAsTic (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease that affects millions of people worldwide, and its negative health burden is accelerating in the ageing population. Despite many available treatments, up to 40% of RA patients do not respond sufficiently to current therapies and the needs for a precision medicine approach and new treatments are pressing. The complexity of RA and unselective mechanisms of action of existing drugs are challenges. Current treatments also have unintended adverse effects because they affect healthy cell types in the body. The proposed project “DDRAsTic” focuses on a particular enzyme called MTHFD2, which plays a crucial role in the metabolism of folate and DNA damage response of activated T cells. Recent research and preliminary data, suggest that MTHFD2 is overactive in RA patients. DDRAsTic aims to address the hyperactive T-cell responses at the core of RA by targeting MTHFD2 with novel inhibitors that spare essential components, thereby minimizing the risk of toxicity and adverse effects. In parallel, DDRAsTic seeks to understand the underlying reasons for the limited efficacy of current RA treatments and explore potential biomarkers that can predict how patients will respond to standard therapies, with a specific focus on understanding the involvement of MTHFD2. The aim is to introduce a precision medicine approach in RA and identify a novel treatment. To achieve this, DDRAsTic adopts a multidisciplinary approach and uses patient-derived specimens, RA animal models and bioinformatics analysis from large cohorts of RA patients to undergo advanced imaging, cellular and molecular techniques. Overall, these analyses aim to provide insights into MTHFD2's regulatory role in abnormal immune responses and advance RA treatment by introducing precision medicine approaches and overcoming treatment toxicity.

Mots clés : dna damage response, mthfd2, rheumatoid arthritis, small molecules inhibitors, precision medicine, metabolism

Participants :
- Institut Karolinska (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 222727.68 €
Projet DeSTENy (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The enteric nervous system (ENS) contains an extensive range of neural subtypes that collectively control essential gut functions largely independent of the central nervous system (CNS). Enteric neuronal diversity is critical for maintaining normal gut function, and a selective dysfunction or local neuronal loss leads to gastrointestinal (GI) disorders. As current treatments of ENS-related disorders are suboptimal, development of novel regenerative approaches has the potential to significantly improve GI health for millions worldwide. As a first milestone towards cell-based regenerative therapies, the Marklund lab recently established a molecular classification of intestinal enteric neurons and discovered that they diversify through a conceptually new stepwise principle during development. The proposed project, DeSTENy, will significantly expand on these discoveries, and investigate how time and spatial context of developing GI tract controls the developing ENS to acquire the appropriate neuron identities at the right time and region within the mouse gut. DeSTENy will integrate cutting-edge regular and spatial single-cell transcriptomics to identify potentially important spatiotemporal driver genes in the ENS of the intestine versus stomach and oesophagus (upper GI-tract). While studies of the developing ENS has been challenged by its inaccessible location within the gut wall, DeSTENy will overcome this limitation by the utilization a precise, rapid and large-scale gene manipulation strategy based on ultrasound-guided transduction of ENS precursor cells followed by temporally controlled gene expression. Apart from transforming our understanding of the largest division of the peripheral nervous system and fundamental developmental processes, DeSTENy will open avenues for regenerative medicine in treating neurological gut disorders, in particular the many affecting the upper GI-tract.

Mots clés : enteric nervous system, developmental biology, inutero gene manipulation, viral transgenics, neural crest, cell fate diversification, neurogenesis, single cell transcriptomics

Participants :
- Institut Karolinska (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 222727.68 €
Projet LIPIDEMIA (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The metabolic syndrome and its several manifestations have currently taken a tremendous toll on many aspects of society. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is considered the liver component of the metabolic syndrome while atherogenic dyslipidaemia, and especially apolipoprotein B (ApoB)-containing lipoproteins, is considered the major causal mechanism in atherosclerosis initiation and progression. By employing novel humanized mouse models that can be rendered acutely dyslipidemic, we have already demonstrated that, at the very onset of dyslipidemia, ApoB-containing lipoproteins interact with immune cells in the liver causing immune and metabolic changes, including ectopic lipid deposition. This opened to the idea that the inflammatory response evoked by acute dyslipidemia plays a pivotal role in the initiation of other important lipid-driven diseases such as NAFLD. Hereafter, we present experiments to elucidate novel mechanisms central to the pathogenesis of NAFLD. We will better define the nature of the innate immune cells that firstly react to a dyslipidemic insult. This will be accomplished by imaging the different hepatic macrophage subsets after transition to dyslipidemia and by examining the physiological changes caused by liver Kupffer cells depletion. Secondly, we will investigate how this initial hepatic response will in turn affect atherosclerosis initiation and progression. We will target atherogenic factors secreted by liver immune cells upon ApoB uptake and inhibit several of them in vivo using neutralizing antibodies. Finally, by employing 2H2O to trace lipids' synthetic rates, we will clarify whether the hepatic lipid accumulation observed in our mice is of endogenous or exogenous sources. This project will yield powerful insights on targetable mechanisms concerning the initiation rather than the end-state of metabolic diseases that are currently endemic to the global population, opening to earlier detection and intervention.

Mots clés : dyslipidemia, nafld, lipoproteins, de novo lipogenesis, kupffer cells, atherosclerosis

Participants :
- Institut Karolinska (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 206887.68 €
Projet SUNEAS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Sustainable Nutrition (SN) is a part of the Sustainable Development Goals and EU policy aims characterized by societal, environmental, health and economic aspects. The recent years' changing food prices due to the socio-economic crisis in Europe have raised new challenges of economic affordability in addition to the dietary environmental pressure and the spread of Non-Communicable Diseases. While diet cost has been an organic part of SN, the possibilities to integrate social subgroup-specific food price elasticates into the diet optimization model haven’t been exploited. SUNEAS is an international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral project; it aims to enrich the existing framework of diet optimization models by integrating micro-simulation and diet optimizations models. As for methods, by statistical and econometric data processing, social subgroup specific household consumption data will be merged with SN metrics into a database. Economic micro-simulation models will be developed to calculate subgroup specific behavioral price elasticity responses (“elasticities”). Social subgroups will be considered by nationality, gender and income level concentrating on the economically vulnerable segments. As a key between micro-simulation and diet optimization models, social subgroup-specific price elasticities will be integrated as variables into diet optimization models also accounting for environmental and health aspects. Then, the effect of price variation on subgroups specific dietary quality and environmental pressure will be investigated for providing evidence food and health policy interventions. Finally, the adaptation of the model into individual-level diet optimization will be explored during a non-academic placement, in order to test its practical applicability. SUNEAS responds to a recent crisis in European food system while prioritize the diverse sustainability aspects by creating a model that integrates these important issues into a novel research methodology.

Mots clés : sustainable nutrition, diet optimization, price elasticities, economic affordability, food prices, micro simulation, environmental impact

Participants :
- Aix-Marseille Université (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 283025.7 €
- Ms-Nutrition (France) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
Projet YOUTHMOVE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

With ongoing migration waves, new questions arise about the integration of migrants, especially migrant youth who have emerging double cultural identities. Not understanding its value and having double consciousness may lead to further stigmatisation, (self)exclusion and conflict among communities. These already affect young people's sport & PA (physical activity) trends as they lean towards separate(d) sports clubs, a more ethnopluralist form of involvement through sport or an effort to gain a form of cultural capital. This project aims to design a 'youth board' model for nonprofit sports organisations (local sports clubs, sports federations) to achieve culturally diverse sports services. The project will prioritise empowering the agency of young people from a multidisciplinary perspective through youth-focused citizen social science and implement digital youth participatory action research titled DigY-PAR via conventional and digital data collection methods (e.g. digital storytelling and crowdsourcing). Inductively, we will embrace an intersectional perspective and analyse youth sports participation trends by conducting qualitative and quantitative data-collecting techniques. In the project, I will use Du Bois's (1903) double consciousness concept to analyse the affect of having multiple cultural identities with migrant youth and, overall, how it affects their sports participation trends. The project will also involve a secondment with Sport.Brussels organisation to cooperate in preparing and operating the 'youth board' as a model for sports organisations. Overall, the project will help me to develop new research skills about digital humanities, cultural emotion studies, youth involvement and state-of-the-art quantitative research techniques, allow me to be part of diversity efforts and experiment with co-creating a youth-led, innovative digital governance mechanism 'youth board' in one of the leading sports organisations of Belgium, Sport.Brussels.

Mots clés : social inclusion through sport, integration of youth migrants, youth involvement

Participants :
- Université catholique de Louvain (Belgique) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 200400.0 €
- Bureau bruxellois de la planification (Belgique) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes publics (hors enseignement & recherche), subvention : 0.0 €
Projet XIDHIR (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Digital heritage are computer-based materials of enduring value that should be kept for future generations, for example photographs and videos. As an asset of our times, historical photographs and videos can greatly benefit from digital restoration techniques, from colorization or color enhancement to the removal of scratches or other artefacts. In this project, we focus on two cases for digital heritage restoration: colorization and color image enhancement of old photographs and videos. Historically, image enhancement methods were rooted in tailor-made priors using well-understood physics and/or statistical models. Now, deep learning approaches leverage large amounts of data to train generative models that can hallucinate on the generated images. However, the useful versatility of deep learning approaches faces two main problems: (a) Deep models are black boxes whose inner behaviors are difficult to interpret, which is an important drawback when assessing their reliability, studying failure cases, and improving their robustness. This hinders their direct adoption in the digital heritage restoration process. Thus, explainability is a highly desirable characteristic for image enhancement models. (b) Image enhancement problems are ill-conditioned, especially for digital heritage photos (e.g., there are many plausible colorizations of a grayscale image). Yet, users rarely have a say in the process of enhancement with deep models, which is typically decided by the model based on statistical decisions. Thus, physically plausible or realistic solutions should be favored, as well as allowing the end user to explore and guide the algorithm towards the intended solution. In this project, we propose to confront the ill-posed nature of image enhancement problems by a comprehensive involvement of the user in the loop, shifting the important decision-making from the model to the user. This will lead to results that are user oriented and achieve higher quality.

Mots clés : computational color, color image processing, color image enhancement and restoration, colorization, digital heritage restoration, computer vision

Participants :
- CERCA Institution (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 165312.96 €
Projet GMPro (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The Arctic is warming at an unprecedented rate, leading to rapid glacier retreat and accelerated melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. This has far-reaching consequences: rising sea levels, changing ocean geochemistry, and the amplification of global warming. Environmental and socioeconomic effects are already becoming evident, extending from the mid- to high latitudes. Nevertheless, uncertainties in the outcomes and severity of these changes persist due to our limited understanding of long-term glacier dynamics and their natural variability. Such can be gained from marine sedimentary records, given reliable proxies are available. GMPro will establish a novel biogeochemical indicator for past glacial meltwater discharge, based on barium-to-calcium ratios (Ba/Ca) in shells of benthic foraminifera. Combining modern calibrations and paleo studies in two key Arctic regions (Greenland, Svalbard), this project will (1a) establish barium pathways in fjords across spatial and temporal gradients of glacier melting and (1b) trace barium uptake into foraminifera shells using state-of-the-art micro-analytical techniques; (2) validate the new proxy against multiple established glaciological and oceanographical indicators; and (3) unlock histories of Arctic deglaciation under past, warm(-er than today) climates. The outcomes will enhance our understanding of glacier dynamics under a changing climate, and form the foundation for refining climate models, predicting future changes and supporting evidence-based adaptation strategies. Through GMPro, I will gain skills and experience in Arctic paleoclimatology and -oceanography, receive focused training in research leadership and management, and build an extensive network for future collaborations. These combined will be my steppingstone to becoming an interdisciplinary, independent and leading researcher within Arctic paleoclimatology and geochemistry.

Mots clés : proxy development, trace elements, foraminifera, arctic, glacier melting, greenland ice sheet, holocene, paleoceanography, micropaleontology, multi proxy

Participants :
- Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities (Danemark) — Partner, associated partner, Autres, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de Tromsø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 251578.56 €
Projet MD GIG (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

MD GIG examines the transition to digital service provision in the public services by exploring the rise of the "online doctor" that provide consultations between doctor-patient via app-based mobile phone technology. The aim is to explore digitalization of healthcare from a worker perspective to highlight the preconditions that give rise to gig work in the healthcare sector and explore the potential consequences at different scales. Whereas before all patients had go to a primary care center on appointment during office hours, today patients can have a consult with a doctor on-demand at any time and from anywhere. Medical work's entry into the platform economy, where work is reshaped into "gigs" that workers perform where and when they want, is developing parallel to organizational and economic restructuring of the healthcare system towards more marketization and private-public partnerships. The project sets out to understand the individual motivations for doctors to take up work in digital doctor platforms through in-depth interviews to produce narratives based in the MDs own experiences, to explore the approach of the trade unions and medical associations to digital doctor platforms through expert-interviews with high level union employees to document their hopes, fears and strategies regarding changing labour markets and working conditions, and to analyse the role of digital doctor platforms in public healthcare restructuring to produce a political economy of digital healthcare in Europe.

Mots clés : digital service provision digital health work platform economy work organization labour and globalization feminist geography

Participants :
- Université de Tromsø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 226751.04 €
Projet HeLP (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : TERMINATED

This project aims to advance, theoretically and methodologically, our understanding of language development and outcomes in heritage language bilingualism (HLB). This research seeks to document and interpret the significance of differences in linguistic competencies and performances across individual heritage speakers (HSs) themselves. While typically HS aggregates are compared to homeland native speakers, it is at least of equal importance to unpack the degree and source of intra-group HS individual variation. Yet, this remains poorly investigated, much less understood. Limited research in this vein suggests that HS variation is largely modulated by individual-level factors, e.g., HL input, patterns of/opportunities for HL use, HL literacy and/or individual differences in cognitive abilities. However, individual/joint effects of these factors are not always observed depending on the specific linguistic (sub-)domains. This suggests an interaction between individual-level and language-internal factors. To understand this latter relationship more fully, HeLP examines Mandarin as a HL in pre-teenage (8-14) HSs, an understudied HL at an understudied time in HLB. Crucially, we include participants with varied language experience, testing narrow syntax of anaphoric dependencies, juxtaposed to contexts modulated by where they are moderated by discourse appropriateness. Rising to contemporary calls advocating for an expansion of HLB into more online methods, we employ electroencephalography, an effectively untapped method in HLB studies. As such, HeLP probes deeper into how HLs develop the way they do with neurolinguistic measures, which also bears social and economic impacts, e.g., guiding HSs and public and private sectors involved to better support HL development/maintenance. The training I receive in this project will also significantly benefit my career development not only by equipping me with new experimental methods but also by training in many transferrable skills.

Mots clés : bilingualism, heritage language, online processing, eeg, mandarin, individual differences

Participants :
- Université de Tromsø (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 210911.04 €