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

Cancer is a major societal challenge, as reflected by Horizon's Europe mission on cancer and Europe's Beating Cancer Plan. In particular, despite great advances in cancer treatment in recent decades, its treatment still remains a challenge without an effective cure. In 2020 the EU reported around 3 million new cancer cases and more than 1.2 million deaths, and its incidence is expected to increase in Europe due to its aging population. The standard treatment relies on the systemic administration of chemotherapeutics, which has limited efficacy and causes side effects. To overcome current limitations, GateMOF will develop low-toxicity Molecular Organic Frameworks (MOFs) as advanced nanosystems to tackle cancer. Such Eco-MOFs will be equipped with molecular gates and loaded with anticancer drugs resulting in advanced biocompatible nanosystems with the ability to respond to stimuli present in the tumor intracellular/microenvironment for a selective anticancer drug delivery. The project combines the unique expertise of the host laboratory (Supramolecular Chemistry and Biotechnology) and the candidate (MOF design and synthesis) to ensure the fulfillment of objectives. The fellow will be trained in advanced nanomaterial preparation with molecular gates to obtain stimuli-responsive MOFs for anti-cancer drug delivery, including training for biological studies for their evaluation in vitro in cells and in vivo in animal models. Notably, the project will also allow the fellow to gain experience in patenting and tech transfer. Altogether, GateMOF will develop a new therapeutic technology and provide the fellow with complementary scientific and transferable skills with a significant impact toward an independent research career.

Mots clés : nanosystems, nanomedicine, anti tumour effect, metal organic frameworks mof, drug delivery, cancer

Participants :
- Université polytechnique de Valence (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 165312.96 €
Projet PostEquus (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Alongside horses, donkeys represent a member of the horse family, well-known for their economic, social and ritual importance in proto-historic France. Traditionally, horses and donkeys have provided humankind with complementary services, not only enhancing our capacity to travel well above our own speed, but also to transport heavy loads across rugged landscapes and to improve farming yields. However, the entire history of horse and donkey management remains difficult to reconstruct based on textual, iconographic and archaeological evidence. The sequence of ancient DNA molecules preserved in archaeological remains has recently provided a new, complementary historical source, considerably advancing our capacity to track the numbers, types and movements of domestic animals in the past, and therefore, to unravel changing herding management practices through time. PostEquus will apply state-of-the-art approaches in ancient horse genomics and develop an innovative genotyping solution for the domestic donkey, to generate an unprecedented corpus of genomic data to assess the phenotypic and genetic diversity of both species in the past history of France. By genetically profiling horses and donkeys from the collapse of the Roman Empire (6th century CE to the 18th century CE), PostEquus will reveal the whole breadth of equine management strategies and their evolution in the face of major societal crises and invasions.

Mots clés : france, ancient dna, horse, donkey, middle age

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 195914.88 €
Projet EaSYFUN (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Synucleinopathies are neurodegenerative conditions characterized by an accumulation of the protein alpha-synuclein, including Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. A long asymptomatic phase precedes the onset of invalidating symptoms. Early diagnostics and treatments are hampered by an incomplete understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms. The Host has recently identified the synaptic depletion of protein elongation factor 1A (eEF1A) at early stage of the disease. In EaSYFUN, the Fellow proposes to combine state of the art genome editing with transgenic murine disease model and human induced pluripotent stem cell derived neurons to unravel eEF1A function at synapses, characterize in depth its alterations in synucleinopathy, and question its pathophysiological role in the disease onset and progress. In Aim1 we shall provide a spatiotemporal map of eEF1A in neurons and its depletion in pathology. In Aim2 we will explore knock-down and rescue of eEF1A variants. We will test whether eEF1A depletion is necessary and sufficient to lead to all or some aspects of synucleinopathy. In Aim3 we will explore the functions of eEF1A variants at synapse (protein translation or degradation, regulation of synaptic vesicle cycle, spine structure) and the binding partners of eEF1A through proteomics. We will provide insights into the alterations of synaptic functions in synucleinopathy and the role of eEF1A. The applicant will benefit from established protocols by the Host and will bring new expertise to tackle eEF1A function at synapses with unprecedented resolution and to provide new therapeutic avenues for Synucleinopathy. EaSYFUN will benefit from an ongoing collaboration with Pr Jochen Herms (DZNE, Munich, Germany). The proposed work will expand the Fellow’s core scientific expertise, soft skills, and professional network to match her plans towards an independent academic research career.

Mots clés : alpha synuclein, elongation factor 1 alpha, synapse, proteomics, synucleinopathy, crispr cas9

Participants :
- German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (Allemagne) — Partner, associated partner, Recherche, subvention : 0.0 €
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 235853.42 €
Projet ASPIRE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The ASPIRE project will develop fast growing seaweed strains to strengthen Europe’s potential to thrive in an emerging seaweed aquaculture industry. Seaweed cultivation is the fastest growing aquaculture sector and provides huge potential for market growth in Europe. The red algae Palmaria palmata is one of the target species of a growing European seaweed industry due to its high content of protein (20–35%), essential minerals and its appealing flavour. Recently, there has been significant advancements in the aquaculture procedures for Palmaria, but these approaches are still mainly built on the utilisation of randomly collected wild-types of Palmaria. A targeted strain selection has therefore huge potential to increase the prospects of Palmaria aquaculture in Europe. The objective of the ASPIRE project is to screen and characterise high- yielding and robust Palmaria strains. This will be implemented utilising high-throughput phenotyping technologies using performance screening (growth, morphology characteristics and photosynthetic parameters) and metabolomic analysis (primary/secondary metabolites using GC-MS, spectrophotometer, NMR etc.). These results in conjunction with next generation sequencing (Illumina seq.) and bioinformatics tools (TASSEL pipeline) will be utilised to identify both biochemical and genetic markers of high-yielding Palmaria strains. To ensure that the results have a high impact and find their way to the commercial end-user, the project will establish a novel and easy-to-use web-based database (MySQL, VueJS) specifically designed for use by the aquaculture stakeholders. The ASPIRE project will conduct farm-level trials to validate the advantages of growing the selected elite seaweed strains in terms of productivity and overall biomass quality. The multi-disciplinary project will set the bases for an urgently needed modern seaweed breeding programme to further develop the emerging European seaweed aquaculture sector.

Mots clés : macroalgae, palmaria palmata, seaweed aquaculture, strain selection

Participants :
- Université nationale d'Irlande à Galway (Irlande) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 215534.4 €
- Mungo murphy's seaweed co. limited (Irlande) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
Projet AutoGut (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Human life expectancy is continuously increasing worldwide. However, longer lives must be accompanied by the increased health of older people. Therefore, the scientific community has set a goal to understand the causes of aging and how to revert them, aiming not only at living longer but living healthier. With this proposal, using telomerase mutant zebrafish as a prematurely aging model, I aim to determine the interdependency between autophagy and aging. In particular, I will determine if modulation of autophagy can revert the causes of aging and improve organism’s health span. Knowing that the intestine is one of the first organs that deteriorate during adulthood, I will alter autophagy specifically in the intestine to revert inflammatory and behavioral phenotypes of aged fish. Moreover, I will study specific diet-microbiome associations in the intestine that might affect intestinal integrity, autophagy, and organism aging. The outcome of this research will create high-quality new knowledge on the relationship between gut autophagy and individual aging and will provide guidelines for the development of new anti-aging approaches.

Mots clés : autophagy, intestine, telomerase, zebrafish, aging, physiology

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 195914.88 €
Projet MOR-AGE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Identifying the causal molecular processes of aging is a long-standing quest in biology. Oxidative stress is a conserved hallmark of senescence among living organisms, but the underlying mechanisms linking oxidative damage and aging have proved difficult to unravel. Multiple reports pinpoint Methionine oxidation as an important antioxidant system influencing the lifespan of cells. Here, I propose to develop an approach including single-particle tracking and microfludic-based single-cell imaging to visualise Methionine oxidation repair in live E. coli bacteria. Such method is currently lacking in the field and its development, although challenging, could deepen our understanding of how system-level failures emerge out of molecular damage.

Mots clés : bacteria, methionine, sulfoxide, msr, single molecule imaging, microfluidic based microscopy, aging, live single cell

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 211754.88 €
Projet PUNF (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The proposed project aims to fundamentally re-frame the social history of the thousands of unfree persons living in France during the central middle ages. It will do so by applying methods and frameworks from the growing field of the history of slavery and dependence, moving away from redundant narratives of a ‘transformation’ from antique slavery to medieval serfdom. It will draw upon a wide range of documentary sources from four ecclesiastical provinces in Northern France (Tours, Rouen, Sens and Reims) to create a database of the practices and interactions between unfree dependents and their lords in the period AD 888 to AD 1121. Once completed, this database will allow for a detailed analysis of the social and economic roles played by practices of unfreedom in medieval society. The three key research themes of the project (The Imposition of Unfreedom; The Agency of the Unfree; The Historical Record of Unfreedom) will be explored in two peer-reviewed journal articles, one in French and the other in English. The researcher, Dr. Niall Ó Súilleabháin, will conduct the project over 24 months at the 'Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médievale' (CESCM) in Poitiers, a vibrant, interdisciplinary centre for medieval studies. The research will be conducted under the supervision of Prof. Martin Aurell, an internationally renowned expert on the power of medieval social élites. The project’s training element, involving mentoring, digital training and participation in academic discussions and outreach, will allow the researcher to develop transferable skills in archival research, digital humanities techniques, research project management and multi-lingual scholarly communication. These skills, in addition to the strengthening of existing collaborative European networks, will significantly enhance the researcher’s career prospects, allowing him to become an international research leader in medieval social history.

Mots clés : unfreedom, slavery and dependency, servitude, ecclesiastical history

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 195914.88 €
Projet ALEPH (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

In recent years, the use of machine learning (ML) for the study of physics has experienced a strong boost. However, most of the machines used are black boxes, and the causal relation between inputs and outputs is often impossible to extract. Nonetheless, a critical aspect when dealing with physical systems is not only to make correct predictions, but to understand the physical laws which underlie these assessments. Recently, an increasing number of works aim at developing interpretable ML methods, from which such hidden laws can be extracted. However, their application to physics has been often limited to supervised and unsupervised learning approaches. The aim of this project is: 1) construct an interpretable reinforcement learning method; 2) extract hidden rules and features in timely and paramount problems in physics. The method combines three well-established concepts of ML: projective simulation, graph neural networks (GNN) and hidden variable disentanglement. PS provides interpretable RL agents that can be trained for a variety of tasks, from the construction of quantum experiments, via skill acquisition in robotics, to the modelling of honeybee colonies. By enhancing their learning power and interpretability with GNNs and variable disentanglement, we will extract the hidden features of the systems the RL agents have interacted with and ultimately, the physical laws governing them. In particular, we will tackle problems in the field of condensed matter, where particles diffuse either passively or actively, to reach a target state. Moreover, we will consider ensembles of RL agents, so as to analyze not only the physical properties of the systems, but also their interactions and communication dynamics in the quest of a common target. The originality of the proposal is directly related to: 1) the methods that will be developed; 2) the systems of study; 3) most importantly, the information we will access and discover with the interpretable RL agents.

Mots clés : machine learning autonomous scientific discovery

Participants :
- Université d'Innsbruck (Autriche) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183600.96 €
Projet TOPORYD (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The rapid advancement in quantum technologies for the experimental control of isolated many-body quantum systems calls for the design of new proposals to probe synthetic states of matter in quantum simulators. Topological quantum matter represents the "holy grail" for quantum scientists as it stands out for its exotic properties and numerous applications in quantum computation. This research proposal aims to develop a theoretical framework for the systematic construction of topological quantum spin liquids suited for realization in Rydberg atom arrays. Combining the Applicant's expertise in topological phases of many-body systems and the Host's mastery of quantum optics, the goal of this project is to envision novel topologically ordered states of matter and devise their implementation in Rydberg atom-based quantum simulators.

Mots clés : topological order, rydberg atom arrays, quantum spin liquids, tensor network, lattice gauge theories

Participants :
- Université d'Innsbruck (Autriche) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 198384.96 €
Projet PROSPER (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

In obesity, pathological expansion of adipocytes leads to increased adipose tissue macrophage (ATM) amounts and adipocyte death. Adipocyte death in turn is linked to ectopic lipid spillover and metabolically triggered inflammation which is a risk factor for diseases such as cancer, particularly hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) that is linked to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Hepatic fat accumulation leads to chronic hepatocyte metabolic and oxidative stress resulting in cell damage and death. Although oxidative damage, microbiome dysbiosis, mitochondrial dysfunction, sterile inflammation are important in promoting NASH and fibrosis and cirrhosis are crucial for HCC development, the exact trigger(s) remain unknown. In HCC tumor cells take up nutrients, including lipids, to support their proliferation and solid tumors in HCC are characterized by enhanced hypoxia and acidosis resulting from a locally modified metabolism. Beyond malignant cells, the tumor-microenvironment (TME) contains immune cells including tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) and dendritic cells. TAMs are pro tumorigenic, sabotaging anti-tumor immunity through various mechanisms. Notably, TAMs’ tumour-suppressive phenotype is directly linked to their lipid loading and disrupting lipid formation in TAMs attenuates tumor growth. Further, in the TME, dendritic cells are triglyceride laden, which contributes to immunosuppression by impairing their ability to present antigen. Despite advancements, a systems approach to understand the exact metabolites and lipid species in obesity driven HCC remains a challenge. Moreover, which metabolites are adipocyte-derived or locally produced within the liver remains unclear. Here using systems biology, coupled to NASH and NASH driven HCC animal models as well as patient cohorts spanning the NAFLD, NASH and HCC spectrum, we aim to identify which factors produced by adipose and the liver regulate obesity driven HCC and contribute to immunosuppression.

Mots clés : obesity, cancer, nash, hcc, metabolites, lipids, systems biology, transcriptomics, immunology

Participants :
- Université de médecine de Vienne (Autriche) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183600.96 €
Projet SLC-Mn-HMNDYT2 (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Solute carriers (SLCs) are membrane proteins that mediate the transport of biological and inorganic molecules. SLC39A14 regulates the transport of manganese (Mn) into primarily liver and intestinal cells from the blood. Bi-allelic loss of function (LOF) variants in SLC39A14 lead to an accumulation of blood Mn, which travels to the brain, causes significant deficits in motor function, eventually leads to the patients being non-ambulatory. Accordingly, these patients are diagnosed with Hypermanganesaemia with dystonia 2 (HMNDYT2) and are treated with Mn chelating agents. This treatment removes excess Mn from the blood; however, the five to eight day every four week treatment regime is impractical, and the treatment fails to alleviate clinical phenotypes in many cases. For this reason, new therapies must be developed. Many LOF variants lead to mislocalization of SLC39A14 away from the plasma membrane, similar to how CFTR mutations induce loss of function. Interestingly, the recently FDA-approved drug "Trikafta" restores CFTR function by relocalizing it LOF variants to the plasma membrane. This method of action could serve as the basis for future HMNDYT2 therapies, but the regulatory landscape surrounding SLC39A14 gene expression, proteostasis, and trafficking is currently unknown. To address this significant gap in knowledge, we will identify genes that regulate SLC39A14 and could be future targets for HMNDYT2 therapies. To do this, we will first characterize the mislocalization of all 15 known SLC39A14 LOF variants in the population using microscopy and flow cytometry. We will then engineer HepaRG liver cells to express WT- and mutant-SLC39A14-EGFP at the endogenous SLC39A14 locus and perform a FACS-based whole genome CRISPR KO screen to identify genes that, when mutated, restore mutant-SLC39A14 levels at the plasma membrane. Lastly, we will validate our findings in other liver and intestine model systems, setting the stage for future therapeutics.

Mots clés : cell line engineering, manganese, solute carriers

Participants :
- Université de médecine de Vienne (Autriche) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 214344.72 €