Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet MAESDOSO (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Independent control over the light and heat transfer is a key target for advanced electrochromic smart glass. Existing commercial electrochromic glasses most often employ thin films of transition metal oxides as the active material which dynamically change color under applied potential. Thus the amount of solar heat and lighting input of the building are controlled. Unfortunately, these glasses suffer from significant drawbacks related to cost, durability, functionality and color. According to "Electrochromic Glass and Film Markets–2014-2021", the market for electrochromic (EC) glasses was small - just over $ 15 million in 2015, but it will reach more than $700 million by 2020. The development of simple, economical, and scalable methods for preparing high-performance electrochromic materials and transparent electrode will endow electrochromic devices with integrated multiple functionalities and wider applications. Motivated by the benefits of electrochromic materials and devices for significant energy saving from reduced heating and cooling loads, the proposed project MAESDOSO aims to develop electrochromic devices for use in domestic ovens. The targeted device configuration will be entirely new in the home appliance market. Reduction of heat losses through glass of doors will be achieved by reflection of infrared radiation using low emissivity coatings on transparent conducting oxide. Integrating the current smart glass technology into the home appliance technology will contribute to reduce the cost of operation, increase the efficiency of the applied appliance and fulfill the aesthetic demands of the user. Application of the smart glass technology into the oven technology will contribute directly in developing alternative resources for energy saving applications complementary to the European Union Horizon 2020 objectives and contribute EU to achieve 20% energy savings by 2020.

Mots clés : electrochromic materials, electrochromic devices, pi conjugated conductive polymers

Participants :
- Arçelik (Turkey) (Turquie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 145845.6 €
Projet CoupledDB (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Index structures are foundational to the performance of database systems and large-scale simulations. Even small advances in indexing can therefore have widespread, sweeping impact on both industry competitiveness and scientific productivity. The confluence of several hardware trends is setting the stage for disruptive innovation in database indexing: deescalating costs of memory make it feasible to organise most of the "hot", frequently accessed data in memory rather than on disk; and increasingly commonplace accelerators such as graphics processing units (GPUs) offer large-scale parallelism with a lower energy footprint. Thus, in-memory indexing that exploits GPUs could be much cheaper, faster, and greener. However, effectively incorporating GPUs into computation is a principal research challenge. To idle the powerful multicore system in favour of exclusively using the GPU connected to it, as done currently, is to squander valuable resources. On the other hand, the GPU has a vastly different computational model, so cannot straight-forwardly leverage multicore techniques. The challenges in handling this dichotomy, in fact, will cross-cut many research areas as the heterogeneity in the compute ecosystem becomes ubiquitous in parallel processing. Building on preliminary results that suggest common data structures processed by architecture-specific algorithms can support heterogeneity, this action will design indexes for the coupled multicore-GPU database systems that will soon be ubiquitous. The indexes will enable more responsive simulations of complex objects such as neurons and vehicle trajectories and support the recent proliferation of mobile-generated data. Moreover, through the action, the researcher will transfer technical parallel programming skills to the host, while the host will transfer expertise about new data types to the researcher. The project results will contribute to Europe's positioning at the forefront of heterogeneous parallel processing.

Mots clés : databases, parallel algorithms, portable algorithms, co processing, modern heterogeneous hardware, clustering, multicore, numa, simd, word representations, spatio temporal keyword indexing

Participants :
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 208400.4 €
Projet ENHANCE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Induced pluripotent stem cell derived hepatocytes (i-Heps) afford us the exciting possibility of redressing the growing shortage in liver transplantation tissue and heralding in a new era of patient specific drug and disease modelling. Clinical applications are restricted by their poor functionality in comparison to the gold standard – freshly isolated primary hepatocytes. Emerging evidence suggests the three dimensional environment surrounding a cell (the niche) critically influences cellular function. The objective of ENHANCE is to identify relevant factors from the extracellular niche which promote i-Hep function in 3D and the mechanisms by which they achieve this. This new knowledge will be used to generate functionally optimized i-Hep constructs suitable for clinical transplantation, with proof of concept studies being performed in rodent models of liver failure. This European Fellowship at Kings College London will provide the researcher with advanced training in iPSC technology, i-Hep generation, 2D niche component screening, 3D cell engineering and animal transplantation. A secondment to SME DefiniGEN Ltd will evaluate the feasibility of transfer to a commercial i-Hep production platform as a critical step towards clinical trials.

Mots clés : liver transplantation, induced pluripotent stem cells, tissue engineering

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet ImmunoMECH (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Inefficient delivery of cellular and molecular medicines to solid tumors can reduce dramatically the efficacy of treatment and affect negatively patient’s survival. This explains in large part why standard chemo- and immune-therapies often fail to treat specific cancer types, even though these therapies are potent enough to eradicate cancer cells. Abnormalities in the structure of the tumor vasculature hinder tumor perfusion and as a result the systemic delivery of the medicines. In many tumor types, blood vessels are hyper-permeable, leaving large interendothelial openings, which causes fluid loss from the vascular to the interstitial tumor space. Vessel hyper-permeability can reduce tumor blood flow, rendering tumors hypo-perfused and hypoxic. Impaired blood supply and hypoxia help cancer cells evade the immune system and increase their invasive and metastatic potential. Normalization of the tumor vasculature is a clinical strategy to repair vascular abnormalities in order to improve perfusion, oxygenation and delivery of medicines. Immunotherapy is gaining interest as an effective therapeutic approach against cancer, but only a subset of patients receiving immunotherapy exhibit sustained tumor shrinkage. Here, we hypothesize that vascular normalization can improve immunotherapy. The objective of the proposed research is the optimal design of the combined immunotherapy and vascular normalization therapeutic approach. To this end, a numerical and experimental study is proposed to model and experimentally validate the vascular normalization procedure, focusing on its combined effects with immunotherapeutic drugs. The proposed research/training will complement the Applicant’s skills in high-performance computing, advanced optimization algorithms and artificial neural networks with the Host’s expertise in tumor microenvironment and cancer drug delivery to enhance his professional maturity and promote international collaborations.

Mots clés : cancer mathematical modeling, vascular normalization, immunotherapy, stochastic optimization, data driven simulation, high performance computing

Participants :
- University of Cyprus (Chypre) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 145941.12 €
Projet ISLI (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Infants reason about their world and social partners in rather sophisticated ways. What underlies this early reasoning capacity? Is it the symbolic representations that support adult abstract combinatorial thought and language? Do infants possess logical operators such as negation and language-like structures such as recursive propositions? This project addresses these questions. In the first line of research, I investigate how infants reason about alternatives. When shown that an alternative is impossible, infants avoid it, pursuing others instead. In Study 1, I ask whether infants’ elimination of alternatives is based on the logical operator negation, which is diagnostic of abstract and symbolic combination in thought. In the second and third lines, I use social contexts to further investigate infant reasoning. Study 2 extends paradigms used to test 1st order attribution of false beliefs about objects. By modifying aspects of the social context, I ask whether infants are able to make 2nd order attributions of false beliefs about beliefs (i.e., she thinks that he thinks…). Importantly, such attributions necessarily take a recursive propositional structure. In Study 3, I ask if social reasoning can be detrimental to infant and even adult logical reasoning. Adults commit reasoning errors and social information (such as inferences about others’ communicative intentions) may give rise to these errors. This study uses communicative and non-communicative contexts to (i) test whether social information gives rise to errors in adults and (ii) determine whether similar errors occur in infancy. Together, these three lines of research illuminate the nature of infant reasoning and its similarity to adult reasoning. Are infants also victim to reasoning errors? Is infant reasoning nevertheless based on symbolic and language-like combinatorial structures? Ultimately, these findings will provide insight into the relationship between infant thought and later language acquisition.

Mots clés : abstract combinatorial thought, logical reasoning, theory of mind, cognitive development, infant cognition

Participants :
- Central European University (Hongrie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 139850.88 €
Projet GammaDelta (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Infectious diseases are one of main global health threats in the 21st century, with antibiotic resistance and specific threats such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and tuberculosis (TB) being of biggest concern to Europe. Vaccination is the most efficient approach to prevent infections. The efficiency of vaccines relies on the memory of the immune system. For decades the ability of an immune cell to “remember” a primary infection and subsequently to respond more effectively to the reinfection was solely attributed to adaptive immune cells. Recent findings showed that innate cells can also develop immune memory. In contrast to adaptive immune cells, the secondary response of innate cells is not pathogen-specific. In both cases the development of memory phenotype is accompanied by epigenetic changes in chromatin structure. These findings raise important questions: what decides about the ability of innate immune cells to mount memory phenotype and which factors trigger the secondary response? Does it lie in the type of receptors involved in the pathogen recognition or in chromatin modifications? “GammaDelta” project aims to answer these questions by studying gamma delta (gd) T cells which share characteristics of both innate and adaptive immune cells. Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine developed to protect against TB induces memory gd T cells and it has been also shown to have a cross-protective effect. The role of memory gd T cells in this process has not been addressed. By applying traditional immunology techniques and newest high throughput sequencing based methodology I will examine the potential of BCG-induced memory gd T cells for the protective effects of the vaccine and which epigenetic mechanisms underlie this process. This will help to understand the interaction between immunological pathways and epigenetic modifications in innate immune memory, a knowledge necessary for the design of a new generation of more effective vaccines.

Mots clés : gamma delta t cells, innate immune memory, transcriptomics of gd t cells, chromatin accessibility in gd t cells, epigenetics, bcg induced cross protection, bcg vaccination

Participants :
- University of Bonn (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 159460.8 €
Projet SalPhagoHet (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Infectious diseases represent a major threat to global human health today. Antibiotic misuse has induced rapid emergence of resistant bacteria and it is becoming increasingly challenging to identify new, efficient drugs. Novel control strategies are urgently required. This project intends to uncover key host immune factors determining the outcome of a bacterial infection with the aim to identify strategies to synergise with the immune system. Emerging evidence suggests that heterogeneous host-pathogen encounters play a key role in disease outcome. To investigate the role of distinct tissue microenvironments during infection, I will use Salmonella enterica to study the immune properties of neutrophils and resident tissue macrophages, previously shown to be non-permissive and permissive environments, respectively. Specifically, I will use a novel approach of phagosome isolation by fluorescence-activated cell sorting and will combine it with sensitive high-resolution mass spectrometry. With this state-of-the-art technology, I will identify key host factors required for phagosome formation by proteomics, which will provide relevant insights into the biology of two key professional phagocytes with important applications in infection biology and immunology. Secondly, I will analyse Salmonella responses to these host determinants using proteomics and stress-inducible promoter fusions to reporter genes. This will highlight key bacterial strategies for intracellular survival and thus novel antimicrobial targets. Finally, I will confirm the in vivo role of identified key factors using a murine infection model. This integrated approach, investigating the host and the pathogen, will be broadly applicable to study other important infectious diseases. This project will highlight specific host and pathogen responses with the aim to close permissive niches where suboptimal antimicrobial exposure allows pathogens to survive and spread.

Mots clés : salmonella, infection, heterogeneity

Participants :
- Newcastle University (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212933.76 €
Projet Tolltum (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Inflammation is an integral part of carcinogenesis. Several different cells of myeloid, lymphoid and non-hematopoietic origin contribute to the strong link between cancer and inflammation and maintain a pro-tumoral environment. The complexity of this environment and the diversity of tumours lead to distinct responses during tumour immunotherapies. Nucleic acid-sensing (NAS) TLR ligands are an essential component of anti-tumour strategies to induce efficient tumour-specific adaptive immune responses. NAS TLRs can also detect nucleic acid released during tumour necrosis, thereby modulating the tumour microenvironment. Interestingly, NAS TLR signalling can induce cell death via apoptosis or induce pro-tumoral survival and proliferation of cancer cells. These opposing effects of NAS TLR ligands may be due to the differential response of distinct tumour-associated cells to TLR ligands. Indeed, the individual response of subsets of tumour-associated cells remains unclear, thus making it difficult to predict the outcome of tumour immunotherapies. Furthermore, the expression and regulation of NAS TLRs in tumour-associated cells remains unknown. Using ex vivo cultures from adenocarcinomas and melanomas, we will systematically analyze the expression of all NAS TLRs on sorted cells. Using cutting edge technologies, we will dissect the role of TLRs in modulating the tumour microenvironment, which will provide novel insights into our ability to modulate cellular inflammation in the tumour. This proposal has the potential not only to reveal novel aspects of NAS TLR regulation, but also to provide new targets for the modulation of the tumour stroma and the infiltrating cells during carcinogenesis.

Mots clés : inflammation, nucleic acid sensing toll like receptors, tumour microenvironment

Participants :
- University of Oxford (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet IPEIBD (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) comprises two main types of intestinal disorders: Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). The incidence and prevalence of IBD is highest in Europe and North America (incidence up to 24 per 100,000 person-years). IBD is not well-understood on a molecular level, and is challenging to diagnose correctly. As the disease is chronic, patients typically require life-long treatment, often with very expensive biological drugs, which are not always effective. Thus, there is a need to increase our understanding the disease, and develop better diagnostic methods so that the correct medication can be applied. In this project we will analyze a unique emerging dataset of controlled gut biopsies taken from a large number of both UC, CD and healthy individuals (109 total) subjected to a unique RNA sequencing technology – CAGE – that can identify novel gene isoforms, transcribed enhancers and non-coding RNAs. As shown in our pilot study, such RNA has great potential as diagnostic biomarkers or even drug targets. The most significant RNA predictors for different IBD subgroups will be used as targets to develop diagnostic kits that will be validated, and ultimately applied, in a clinical setting. The host group of professor Sandelin has set up the CAGE technology that will be used for this analysis and the researcher, Dr Vitezic, did her PhD work on the analysis of data from this technology including human tissue samples while in Japan. The project is involving excellent academic and clinical environments and the applicant will spend time in both. This is a unique clinical genomics proposal focusing novel technology and European strengths, targeting a growing medical problem. Thus, it fits perfectly with the goals for the IF and Horizon 2020.

Mots clés : inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, crohn s disease, transcriptomics, promoter, enhancer

Participants :
- University of Copenhagen (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212194.8 €
Projet INFLEMT (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) defines a group of chronic inflammatory disorders of the digestive tract, with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease being its two major clinical manifestations, affecting 2.5 million people in Europe. The high prevalence of IBD in Europe and the multiple clinical challenges associated with a significant degree of unresponsiveness to anti-inflammatory therapies and development of complications requiring surgical intervention demand a deeper understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underpinning IBD. This project aims to understand the role of the process termed Epithelial–to–Mesenchymal Transition (EMT), an embryonic cellular trans-differentiation program re-launched in many pathological conditions, in the pathogenesis of IBD. EMT has in fact been detected in the inflamed intestinal mucosa and surrounding fibrotic areas of IBD patients and experimental models of colitis, however whether EMT functionally contributes to the pathogenesis of IBD is poorly understood. The INFLEMT project aims to: 1) profile EMT in human IBD to identify its cellular features and correlation with the disease stage; 2) elucidate the impact of EMT on the integrity, functionality and regenerative capacity of the intestinal epithelial barrier; 3) explore the effects of EMT on fibrosis development and modulation of the immune response to assess its role in sustaining the chronic intestinal disease. These objectives will be pursued by utilizing patient-derived biopsies as well as novel mouse models to manipulate EMT in the intestinal epithelium. Comprehensive analysis, including RNA-sequencing and multispectral imaging, of the involved cellular and microenvironmental components (epithelial barrier, immune cells, fibroblasts) will be performed in acute and chronic colitis settings to mechanistically configure EMT as an epithelial injury response and a major functional driver in the pathogenesis of IBD.

Mots clés : epithelial to mesenchymal transition, cell plasticity

Participants :
- Humanitas University (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 171473.28 €