Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet FluoNeeD (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The formulation of drug nanocarriers has attracted increasing attention over the last decades. In particular, the possibility to combine therapeutic and imaging functionalities in a single nanoplatform (theranostic) has been widely explored to advance therapeutic approaches and promote the transition from conventional medicine to personalized medicine. Drug nanocarriers, holding the potential to produce a revolution in medicine, are lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for gene delivery. They have proven versatility and efficacy even though today it is still not possible to predict and control their cellular uptake and targeted delivery. One of the main unmet challenges of LNP formulations is increasing their cellular uptake and gene release into the cytosol. Currently, it is possible to follow the fate of LNPs after administration only with the addition of labels (e.g., fluorophore) or specific ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequence encoding for fluorescent protein. This results in the lack of possibility to follow the fate of LNPs once administered in vivo with a non-invasive imaging technique. Theranostic strategies to deliver RNA and simultaneous imaging of target organs is an important unmet goal. Recently, it has been demonstrated that fluorination of components in gene delivery vehicles strongly improved their cellular uptake and, most importantly, their gene endosomal escape. The fluorination strategies investigated so far use either -CF3 groups or long linear perfluoroalkyl chains, but a tailored design of the fluorinated group could also endow the nanocarrier with excellent imaging functions. In this context, FluoNeeD strategy is to tailor fluorination of LNPs in order to: (i) improve their therapeutic efficacy by enhancing LNP cellular uptake and promoting gene endosomal escape; (ii) render LNPs trackable in vivo by 19F-MRI and in vitro/ex vivo by Raman microscopy.

Mots clés : lipid nanoparticles, fluorine chemistry, gene delivery, 19f mri

Participants :
- École polytechnique de Milan (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212163.84 €
- AstraZeneca (Sweden) (Suède) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
- Istituti di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico (Italie) — Partner, associated partner, Recherche, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet SUNEM (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2023)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Old Norse poetry, particularly the corpus of narrative and gnomic verse known as Eddic poetry, forms one of the richest contributions from Scandinavia to the literary heritage of Europe. This poetic corpus survives only through a chain of manuscript copies which separate our extant texts from the original compositions. The aim of SUNEM is to investigate the changing understandings of metrical forms possessed by the scribes who copied and recopied Eddic poetry. Specifically, the project will create digital texts and metrical annotations of the poems in one particular source, Hervarar saga, and use the various surviving manuscripts of this work (14th-17th centuries) as a test-case to evaluate scribal engagement with metrical norms during the Late Norse and Early Modern periods. These poems are in three different alliterative metres, each of which shows specific rules concerning features such as syllable weight or the placement of unstressed syllables. As scribes make changes to the texts they copy, they are sometimes careful to continue to adhere to these rules, and sometimes disregard them. SUNEM will investigate these patterns of change with respect to these rules in order to assess copyists' varied understandings of and commtiments to older rules of Eddic metres. These models of how scribes copied Eddic texts and conceived of the poetic forms they reproduced will be of practical use to future editors of Norse poetry, extend our understandings of traditional Norse metres beyond the Classical Norse period, and provide new perspectives on the transmission of verse.

Mots clés : old norse, eddic poetry, poetic metre

Participants :
- Université d'Oslo (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 210911.04 €
Projet FALLOW (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

This project proposes to investigate the resurgence of intentional fallowing as a practice for soil regeneration and as a tool for sustainability policies in Europe. It will deploy an interdisciplinary approach grounded in philosophy and multispecies ethnography to analyse the contemporary resurgence and mutations of intentional fallowing practices in European agriculture and policies, as well as the cultural, social, and scientific consequences of this shift. It combines qualitative research on European farms conducting experimental intentional fallowing, a genealogical analysis of the historical and political context in which these practices are re-emerging, and an exploration of the adjacent spaces in which fallowing and fallowness are studied, such as microbiology, conservation biology, and bioengineering. By combining these three lines of inquiry, the project demonstrates that fallowing is a marginalised practice currently under re-evaluation and potential re-integration into projects and policies that go beyond agricultural concerns. It will analyse the biopolitical and cosmopolitical dimensions of this renewed interest in alternatives to synthetic fertilisers and intensive agriculture by showing that fallowed soils are a site where a variety of interests and projects converge, and by tracing how these practices take up, replay, and extend questions of productivity and idleness, growth and alternatives to economic expansion. This project will combine qualitative methods, in particular in-depth interviews with practitioners in the field, with an extensive engagement with literature in agricultural science, microbiology, conservation biology, and ecology, producing an analysis of fallowing that cuts across what is usually deemed “cultural” and “biological” domains and studies the role, promises, and implications of fallowing practices in times of mass extinction and soil depletion.

Mots clés : interdisciplinary soil studies, cosmopolitics, fallowing, environmental humanities, science and technology studies, regenerative agriculture, biopolitics

Participants :
- Université d'Oslo (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 226751.04 €
Projet ConcTrad (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Tradition is a key analytical concept in the study of Islam, Muslims, and the Middle East in western academia. In late 19th and early 20th-century discourses, the concept elicited negative connotations, such as stagnation, backwardness, and irrationality. In recent decades, scholars revised these earlier conceptions of tradition, foregrounding the ability of a tradition to adapt and change. This reformulated understanding of tradition undergirds Talal Asad’s theorization of Islam as a “discursive tradition,” an analytical approach that has dominated the field of Islamic studies. Yet in Arabic, there is no single equivalent to the Anglophone concept “tradition.” Indeed, several distinct Arabic terms, including taqlīd, turāth, sunna, naql, and others, are often equated with “tradition,” even though their usages, histories, political mobilizations, temporalities, counter-concepts and affective valences differ from each other as well as from the Anglophone concept. In this action, I will conduct a diachronic and synchronic analysis of the semantic network of Arabic concepts often equated with the Anglophone concept “tradition” in Egypt and Greater Syria in the 19th and 20th centuries. The methodology for this action includes the close reading of Arabic texts representative of major intellectual and ideological currents in the modern Arab and Muslim world, as well as quantitative analyses that chart the distribution and frequency of these concepts in Arabic periodicals and other salient texts in the same period. The larger aim of the project is to integrate the experiences and worldviews reflected in Arabic concepts into the analytical vocabulary that structures the study of Islam, Muslims, and the Middle East in western academia.

Mots clés : conceptual history, modern middle east, modern arab world, tradition, islam

Participants :
- Université d'Oslo (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 226751.04 €
Projet ICBS (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : SIGNED

In the beginning of the 20th century, Iraqi cities and urban environments changed and new public spheres and forms of work and leisure emerged. New neighborhoods, and institutions, cafés, and theaters changed the structure of urban life. In the process, modern leisure and entertainment began moving from the private realm into the public and increasingly came to be organized on a commercial scale. One index of these changes was cinema, which arrived in Iraq in the early 20th century and quickly became a highly popular form of entertainment. A modern and global rather than a specifically Iraqi development, the emergence of cinema in Iraq can be seen as a local inflexion of a global phenomenon. Situated at the crossroads of Egyptian, Indian, European, and American film production, cinema in Iraqi sheds light on the transnational qualities of early cinema in Iraq itself but also in the many areas across the globe where national cinema only emerged belatedly. Yet, the development of the specific culture of cinema, so significant in the history of Iraq as well as in the field of cinema studies and nonwestern cinema, has received scarce attention. My project undertakes this fresh subject, interrogating the transnational circulation of cultural products and material objects, including films and technology, and exploring how they came together at a particular historical moment with capital, performers, and people with technical skills to establish cinema as a form of leisure in Iraq. Studying the emergence of cinema in Iraq through an approach that attends to cinema’s material and transnational histories and contexts can enhance our understanding not just of Iraq and its many entangled networks, connections and histories, but also of early cinema outside of the global centers of gravity. Finally, TECI shows how the intersection of capital, public space, and popular entertainment lays open both the possibilities, tensions, and conflicts that developed in 20th century Iraq.

Mots clés : iraq, baghdad, middle east history, history of leisure

Participants :
- Université d'Oslo (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 226751.04 €
Projet HYDROBIOMEM (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2022)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Eukaryotic cells exist in highly dynamic environments and are subject to a variety of existential threats, ranging from viruses to pathological defects in their own genome. To cope with these challenges, cells have developed a conserved pathway in order to degrade harmful objects internal to the cell. This process is know as autophagy. Autophagy involves the formation of a double lipid membrane compartment that wraps around harmful targets, such as damaged organelles, protein aggregates or lipid droplets in order to facilitate their degradation. Although the genetic and molecular triggers for autophagy have been analysed in much detail, the biophysical principles governing such a dynamic process have received remarkably little attention. The biophysics of autophagy is highly complex biophysical process, involving the driven, non-equilibrium morphodynamics of a fluid membrane that must wrap its target. This incorporates molecular signalling and adhesion, vesicular trafficking and active force generation and complex flows of the lipid membrane in curved geometries as well as the Stokesian hydrodynamics of the embedding fluid. This makes the dynamics of autophagy essentially a problem of active soft matter physics.  In HYDROBIOMEM I will build on demonstrable expertise in active soft matter physics, morphology and fluid dynamics to develop novel theoretical and computational models to give mechanistic understanding and predictions of the dynamics of double membrane wrapping in autophagy. I will apply these tools, in close collaboration with experimentalists, to test existing biological hypotheses and give new insight into this ubiquitous process in cell biology.

Mots clés : membrane hydrodynamics biological soft matter wetting low reynolds number hydrodynamics

Participants :
- Université d'Oslo (Norvège) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 210911.04 €
Projet CoLiBRI (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

In the EU, transport is responsible for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. For the transition to a climate neutral economy, battery development and production strategies are thus important. By 2030, the EU expects an increased requirement of 18 times more lithium and 5 times more cobalt. These elements are released into the aquatic environment by mining processes and wastewater discharge. In aquatic systems, sediments are important and dynamic sinks or sources for such elements, depending on varying environmental conditions. The chemical state, bioavailability, and toxicity of these elements in aquatic systems is highly influenced by environmental parameters such as pH and temperature, which in turn are influenced by climate change. The goal is to investigate the toxicity of lithium and cobalt in aquatic systems under different environmental conditions. This will be addressed in 3 research objectives: 1) Investigation of the impact of temperature and pH on the distribution and chemical characteristics of lithium and cobalt within aquatic systems 2) Analysis of toxic effects of lithium and cobalt to zebrafish 3) Evaluation of lithium and cobalt related microbial community changes within the sediment. To address these objectives, we will perform a long-term exposure with zebrafish to selected sediments spiked with lithium and cobalt in an aquarium system capable of monitoring and regulating different water parameters. The toxicity will be determined with the zebrafish embryo toxicity test. Gene-expression analysis will reveal sub-lethal toxic effects of the selected elements. Bioaccumulation and content of lithium and cobalt in water and sediment will be quantified by ICP-MS. Changes in the sediment microbial community will be investigated by metagenome fingerprinting. With this interdisciplinary holistic approach we aim to improve environmental risk assessment of sediments contaminated with lithium and cobalt, particularly in regard to climate change.

Mots clés : zebrafish, sediment, lithium, cobalt, toxicity, bacteria, freshwater, metal speciation, climate change, sediment water interface

Participants :
- Université d'Örebro (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 206887.68 €
- Federal Institute of Hydrology (Allemagne) — Partner, associated partner, Recherche, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet CSScanJet (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

At high temperature, quarks and gluons are no longer confined in hadrons and form instead a complex phase of matter called the quark-gluon plasma. Among the various ways of probing this phase in nucleus-nucleus collisions, a promising one is to study how jets are affected by their propagation through the quark-gluon plasma, an effect commonly referred to as jet quenching. This project aims at developing a consistent computational framework grounded in perturbative quantum chromodynamics to describe jet quenching from large to small colliding system sizes. Its final outcome is twofold. It will deepen our understanding of the embedding of jets in a space-time structure as well as answer topical questions regarding the phenomenology of jet quenching in small systems.

Mots clés : quantum chromodynamics, jets, heavy ion collisions, jet quenching

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

Multiple sclerosis (MS) affects 2.8 patients worldwide, 700000 in Europe alone, and is characterized by subsequent phases of different severity which eventually evolve into a chronic phase and untreatable paralysis. Current main diagnostic approaches are limited to symptom evaluation and imaging, underlying a lack of informative and reliable biomarkers. MonitorMS aims to test the use of cell-free Chromatin (cfChromatin) present in the plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) as a new biomarker to monitor the progression of MS pathology and response to treatment. The proposal includes the development of a new technology based on nanoCut&Tag(nanoCT) to improve and simplify the current methodology used to profile cfChromatin. Recently, it has been demonstrated that cell-free DNA in plasma is still wrapped around histones which still preserve the presence of post-translational modifications, termed cfChromatin. Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing (ChIP-seq) has been recently used to profile cfChromatin from plasma of patients affected by liver, and heart damage or cancer showing a pathology and stage-specific signature. To decode the information inside cfChromatin a reference dataset is needed. The first aim of MonitorMS is to develop a protocol to profile cfChromatin from plasma/cell-free CSF with nanoCT and compare it to the actual reference (ChIP-seq). In the second phase, the technology will be employed on a larger cohort of samples from a KI biobank, including patients under immunosuppressant treatment. Simultaneously a single-cell multimodal dataset, from matched MS patients' immune cells and post-mortem tissues, will be generated to deconvolve the informative content of cfChromatin. The final phase of the project will include further integration of the generated cfChromatin data with several MS single-cell transcriptome and spatial data. Finally, machine learning will be used to test cfChromatin as a stage/treatment-specific biomarker in MS.

Mots clés : single cell neuro immunology multiple sclerosis cell free dna precision medicine diagnostic

Participants :
- Institut Karolinska (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 222727.68 €
Projet PlasticLiver (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2021)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The liver can regenerate thanks to a unique cell plasticity in which “terminally differentiated cells” change identity. Hepatocytes, the most abundant cell type sustaining liver metabolism, can transdifferentiate into a completely different cell type to repair the bile duct epithelium, which entails not only a fate switch but also a conversion of epithelial polarity. Despite this regenerative capacity, bile duct diseases present a major clinical challenge, often requiring a liver transplant. Activating and controlling endogenous regenerative programs, which preliminary data suggest are liver region-specific, is thus a promising therapeutic strategy but requires a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms.  Based on regional differences in the quality of regenerated bile ducts in a mouse model of Alagille syndrome, I hypothesize that bile ducts in the hilar region regenerate via cholangiocyte proliferation, yielding well-formed epithelia, while bile ducts at the organ periphery develop de novo via hepatocyte transdifferentiation, yielding malformed bile ducts with aberrant polarity. Because there are multiple cell sources for liver repair, PlasticLiver aims to account for spatial and within-cell type heterogeneity in the liver during bile duct regeneration. Taking advantage of a novel cutting-edge approach for high resolution barcode lineage tracing and gene expression profiling co-developed in my host lab, I will resolve region-specific cell sources and mechanisms in developing and regenerating livers of a mouse model of Alagille syndrome. Moreover, combining generated single cell gene expression data and microscopy analysis of healthy and regenerated tissues, I will identify molecular mechanisms and potential targets to improve epithelial polarity in regenerated peripheral bile ducts. Ultimately, PlasticLiver will yield fundamental mechanistic insights into cell fate decisions and why liver, but no other organs, uses this type of cellular plasticity.

Mots clés : single cell high resolution lineage tracing

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

We often choose to distract our minds, either externally (e.g., looking at our phone) or internally (e.g., thinking about weekend plans). It is currently not clear how, when, or why we (choose to) become distracted, nor do we have a mechanistic understanding of flow states, in which there is minimal distraction. This is a pressing issue, as distraction is omnipresent in our society, obstructing our capacity to focus both on personal goals and the many challenges humanity faces. To advance our understanding on how distraction occurs, we must overcome the current practice in which different attentional states are studied in isolation. I propose to capture the different research fields on attention in a single space defined by the dimensions “direction” (external vs. internal) and “locus” (on-task vs. distracted), distinguishing four attentional states (i.e., On-Task-External, On-Task-Internal, External Distraction, and Mind Wandering). The objective of the MIND-FLOW project is to map the dynamical transitions between these states and to causally influence the amount of time people spend in each of them. I will use behavioral measures, eye-tracking, and pupillometry to capture these states and quantify the dwelling times and a transition matrix through computational modeling. Inspired by recent empirical work on attention switching and neurobiological models of mind wandering, I hypothesize (i) the existence of an Off-Focus state through which these dynamical transitions occur, (ii) that internal bias and goal value determine which areas are visited most, and (iii) that contextual manipulations can alter the relative times spent in each area. I will test these predictions by a model-comparison approach and within-subject experimental manipulations of context volatility and task difficulty. Bridging these different fields of attentional research will increase cross-talk between them and provide building blocks for interventions targeting healthy attentional engagement.

Mots clés : attention, mind wandering, computational modeling, distraction, eye tracking, cognitive flexibility

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