Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet LiVirIn (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

An estimated ~400 million people are chronically infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection worldwide, resulting in an estimated $658 million in medical costs and lost wages annually. Although HBV disease can be prevented by vaccination, many people still become infected. Potent and safe drugs are available to eradicate HBV viral particles and clinically ‘cure’ HBV infection. However, during replication HBV delivers a very stable form of viral DNA (covalently closed circular DNA, cccDNA) in the nucleus of the hepatocyte, causing life-long risk of reactivation of HBV infection in case of suppression of the immune system (e.g. chemotherapy). Therefore the pharmaceutical industry is now aiming to develop strategies to eradicate the virus from the infected liver completely. Such studies are hampered by the lack of appropriate in vitro or animal models due to the narrow tropism of HBV for human hepatocytes. The hypothesis of the project is that creation of 3D culture systems encompassing hepatocytes, hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) and liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSECs) derived from an inexhaustible source of cells (human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs)) in a matrix that mimics the biophysical and biochemical features of the liver, will be a superior model for the study of HBV infection and evaluation of the efficacy of antiviral drugs. We also hypothesize that such 3D organoids will improve maturation and function of hepatocytes, HSCs and LSECs. The proposed studies are highly interdisciplinary, merging expertise from biology, to biophysics and engineering, with inter-sector mobility, networking, collaboration and knowledge transfer between academia and industries. The knowledge developed will be disseminated by presentations at consortium meetings, international conferences and in peer publications. All these aspects will train the researcher as independent thinker, more knowledgeable in scientific research which will provide an enormous boost to his carrier.

Mots clés : hepatitis b virus, chronic infection, liver organoid, hepatocytes, anti viral drugs, knowledge transfer

Participants :
- KU Leuven (Belgique) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 172800.0 €
Projet REAP (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

An experienced researcher with laboratory expertise in real time monitoring of laser-matter-ambient-interactions will be diversified towards scalable production which is desperately needed to fully realise the potential of high repetition rate, multi-kiloWatt, femtosecond and picoseconds laser technologies. The fabrication of integrated multifunctional thin film devices by additive (inkjet, spray) and subtractive (laser) manufacturing on Roll to Roll (R2R) production platforms is also suddenly possible and desperately needed to transform the competitiveness of Europe’s SME manufacturing sector. The training programme will lead to scalable innovation by developing diagnostics for ultra-precision laser processes. The initial objective of the project is to identify which intersecting value chains for real time or in-line diagnostics can fully realise the potential of short pulse laser structuring. Three diagnostics based on gated (i) spectral analysis of laser generated plasma plumes, (ii) image analysis of laser material ambient interactions and (iii) laser induced breakdown spectroscopy will be developed. The Fellow will demonstrate two process diagnostics using the R2R pilot line at the industry site. The application of these on-line tools will create pathways for cost effective production based on new nano-inspired materials relevant to flexible large area electronics. The multi-partner training environment provides excellent facilities for the talented ambitious Fellow. Over 30+ researchers will be directly impacted by the project. An active programme of knowledge transfer and information dissemination is also proposed based on industrial workshop, active conference participation, journal publications, and science promotion.

Mots clés : laser, camera, spectral emission, shadowgraphy, laser breakdown spectroscopy, roll to roll, thin flexible glass, large area electronics, process monitoring

Participants :
- National University of Ireland (Irlande) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 187866.0 €
Projet UNBIAS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

An important part of climate variability takes place at the sub-annual to decadal scale. However, climate reconstructions mostly focus on long-term trends (thousands to millions of years), while data of past, fast and short-term changes is limited. To calibrate climate models and extend our knowledge of the causes and effects of rapid climate change, archives recording higher resolution climate change are needed. Contrary to sedimentary records, bivalve shells record environmental conditions at a resolution of days to months. Conventional climate proxies in bivalve shells (stable isotopes and trace elements) depend on multiple physiological and environmental parameters, complicating the reconstruction of individual climate parameters. UNBIAS aims to develop new, more accurate tools for absolute reconstructions of climate parameters on a sub-annual scale from bivalve shells. Parameters influencing climate proxies will be disentangled by combining state-of-the-art trace element and microstructure analyses with the new powerful carbonate clumped isotope method, which reconstructs absolute temperature. These techniques are applied directly on cross sections through shells of Arctica islandica, Ostrea edulis and Cerastoderma edule. First, more accurate climate proxies will be developed by applying this interdisciplinary approach on bivalves grown in monitored North Sea environments. After development, these new proxies will first be applied to reconstruct sub-annual climate and environmental change over the past 500 years, recording human impact on North Sea environments. Finally, fossil bivalve shell records from the warm Miocene epoch highlight the effect of global warming on short-term climate variability. UNBIAS provides me with interdisciplinary skills and expertise from specialized institutes in the Benelux and Germany. It will offer me unique chances to gain experience in teaching, professional network and outreach, thus greatly enhancing my career opportunies.

Mots clés : bivalve shell, seasonality, proxy development, clumped isotope analysis, trace elements, microstructure

Participants :
- Utrecht University (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 175572.48 €
Projet EQRESFRAME (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

An important requirement of performance-based earthquake engineering is the simultaneous control of structural and non-structural damage. Structural damage measures are related to story drifts, inelastic deformations and residual drifts. Non-structural damage measures are related to story drifts and storey accelerations. Earthquake reconnaissance reports highlight that injuries, fatalities and economical losses related to failure of non-structural components far exceed those related to structural failures. Moreover, explicit consideration of non-structural damage becomes vital in the design of critical facilities such as hospitals carrying acceleration-sensitive medical equipment, which have to remain functional in the aftermath of an earthquake. Structural and non-structural damage results in direct and indirect losses such as repair costs and costly downtime during which the building is repaired and cannot be used or occupied. Therefore, there is an urgent need for minimal-damage structures that can truly achieve seismic resilience. Researchers have developed self-centering frames with the goal of avoiding residual drifts. Other studies focused on increasing the energy dissipation capacity of structures by adding dampers with the goal of reducing storey drifts and storey accelerations. This project aims to couple, for the first time, self-centring systems and modern seismic energy dissipation systems with the goal of developing a novel earthquake-resilient steel frame. The optimal combined design of the self-centering and energy dissipation mechanisms will lead to a steel frame with superior minimal-damage seismic performance.

Mots clés : earthquake engineering, resilience, steel

Participants :
- University of Warwick (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet STEADY (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Analyses of surface deformation can help to define the evolution of areas, structures and infrastructures menaced by hazardous phenomena. To this end, space-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data provides direct measures of surface movements. Specific techniques to handle SAR data have been recently applied to monitor not only natural hazardous phenomena, such as earthquakes, subsidence and landslides, but even structural health of buildings and infrastructure. The large spread of these techniques is supported by the non-invasiveness of radar signals, the possibility to cover vast areas and the availability of a large database of data acquired since the ‘90s, despite they do not give any indication about the triggering factors and the strain source or the tensile condition of a structure. STEADY Project (SaTEllyte synthetic Aperture radar interferometry to model Dam stability) is aimed to use SAR data to monitor dam structural health and, even more, to apply an innovative approach, exploiting deformation fields as a starting point to re-create a simplified analytical model, providing preliminary hints about the stress-strain status of the dam in a short time if compared with traditional finite element models. The relevance of this process emerges when environmental or logistic conditions do not allow to monitor dams through traditional geodetic and numerical techniques. In such cases, results obtained from SAR data combined with an analytical model constitute a reliable diagnostic tool of dam structural health to avoid any extraordinary failure that may lead to loss of lives. The method will be tested on an emblematic real case, the Mosul dam, facing the following goals: (i) analysis of satellite SAR data available over the area, (ii) identification of an analytical model to reproduce dam deformation behaviour and tensile condition, (iii) implementation of a semi-automatic tool to perform numerical simulations, applicable to further cases.

Mots clés : remote sensing, sar interferometry, dam model, damage assessment

Participants :
- Sarmap (Switzerland) (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 175419.6 €
Projet TACT (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Doctoral Networks
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs) are fast growing classes of oncology therapeutics. They consist in a highly potent cytotoxic drug connected via a linker to an antibody that is specifically targeting certain tumor markers. By combining the cytotoxicity of the drug and the targeting properties of the antibody, ADCs kill cancer cells whilst leaving the healthy cells unaffected, a marked improvement compared to classical chemotherapies. However, limitations still exist which could fuel the development of new generations of ADCs with improved therapeutical properties. Targeted Anti-Cancer Therapies (TACT) is an innovative, international, multidisciplinary training and research programme which thus aims to train 11 Early- Stage Researchers (ESRs) on the development of state-of-the-art anti-cancer therapeutics and equip them with transferable, future career-enhancing skills to create the next generation of experts in Europe. More specifically, TACT’s research programme will focus on key priorities for the conception of new and more potent generations of Protein-Drug Conjugates (PDCs): site-specific bioconjugation methods, more potent payloads, environment-specific cleavable linkers, more efficient protein-based targeting systems and new analytical tools for acute characterization. This will be achieved by exposing the ESRs to the leading intersectoral research scientists and laboratories in Europe who are active in this field. In doing so, TACT combines state-of-the-art research with excellent training in PDCs, one of the hot topics in cancer and targeted therapies.

Mots clés : bioconjugation, antibodies, immunotherapy

Participants :
- Queen's University Belfast (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 606345.12 €
- Almac (United Kingdom) (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 303172.56 €
- Spirochem ag (Suisse) — Partner, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 281276.64 €
- Wageningen University & Research (Pays-Bas) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 265619.88 €
- Heidelberg Pharma (Germany) (Allemagne) — Partner, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 252788.4 €
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Partner, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 274802.04 €
- Technical University of Munich (Allemagne) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 252788.4 €
- Université de Strasbourg (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 549604.08 €
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 303172.56 €
Projet ANGRAM (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Antimatter research has become a crucial sphere in the continuous attempt to understand the Universe and its laws. The only stable, neutral antimatter atom available for laboratory study is the antihydrogen. We here propose to carry out a 30% measurement of the gravitational acceleration for antihydrogen, which will reveal the sign of gravity acting on antimatter, within the next two years. The principle is based on the rotation of a three grating moiré deflectometer, coupled to a detector, and requires neither position resolution nor time-of-flight information for the through-going antihydrogen atoms. The realization of the measurement requires high quality simulations and the state-of-the art moiré deflectometer, with gratings that are able to detect the annihilating antihydrogen atoms. The project goal will be reached through a series of software and hardware developments that are part of the implementation of the three work packages defined in the proposal. The main deliverables are new, faster simulations for antihydrogen annihilation and novel technologies for instrumentation for inertial sensing and detection of antimatter. In a more general context, this project proposal addresses the very fundamental question: do matter and antimatter fall in the same way? The Weak Equivalence Principle says that they must, but our understanding of antimatter is far from complete, with the baryon asymmetry in the Universe being one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics. A successful outcome of the proposed work will accelerate the researcher's growth towards her career goal: becoming a mature experimental physicist. At the same time, the host institution will greatly expand its influence in antimatter research and will benefit from new collaborators.

Mots clés : antihydrogen, gravity, moire deflectometer, simulations, detector

Participants :
- Austrian Academy of Sciences (Autriche) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 166156.8 €
Projet REPLAY (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria is one of the main challenges faced by modern medicine and understanding its evolution is urgently required. As any other evolved trait, three fundamental evolutionary forces guide the evolution of AMR: history, chance and selection. The specific role of each force determines whether, by what mechanism, and to what degree AMR evolves in a given population. Horizontal gene transfer is the main route for acquisition of AMR in bacterial pathogens and plasmids play a key role in the spread of resistant determinants. Of critical clinical importance is plasmid-mediated carbapenem-resistance in the Enterobacteriaceae family. The recurrent isolation of certain successful plasmid/bacterium associations in hospitals distributed worldwide is an example of how history and chance constrain the emergence of AMR. For example, pOXA-48 plasmid, encoding the OXA-48 carbapenemase, is frequently associated with the ST11 serotype of Klebsiella in hospitals around the world. Why is pOXA-48 restricted to a handful of clones if it can be mobilized to all K. pneumoniae serotypes? To answer this question, I am proposing a novel project that will analyze the impact of the three evolutionary forces in the evolution of plasmid-mediated AMR in clinical strains of K. pneumoniae. First, using experimental evolution and whole genome sequencing, I will quantitatively analyze the impact of each evolutionary force in AMR evolution. Also, I will study the adaptive mutational pathways leading to the compensation of plasmid-mediated costs. Then, I will use the novel high-throughput genetic screen CRISPRi, which allows silencing the expression of all chromosomal and plasmid genes one by one, to analyze the molecular basis determining the successful plasmid/bacterium associations. Altogether this cutting-edge proposal will greatly impact our ability to predict AMR evolution, paving the way for the development new intervention strategies to counteract AMR.

Mots clés : evolution of antibiotic resistance mediated by plasmids  experimental evolution and whole genome sequencing  crispri  interference

Participants :
- Instituto Ramón y Cajal de Investigación Sanitaria (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Autres, subvention : 172932.48 €
Projet INNOTARGETS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Doctoral Networks
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a challenge to human health and health-systems, and we need novel antimicrobials or drugs that can re-sensitize multi drug resistant (MDR) bacteria to existing antimicrobials. Metabolic enzymes have largely been ignored in the search for antimicrobial targets, and they are an untapped resource. The aim of INNOTARGETS is to train ESRs in highly innovative approaches to identify metabolic drug targets in pathogenic bacteria. The training will deliver ESRs that can become creative, future research team leaders within industry or academia. The network joins 7 academic and 3 non-academic organisations, including two antibiotic discovery companies. The training is multi-disciplinary and trans-sectoral and provides 432 person-months of training to 12 ESRs. The types of targets foreseen are: 1) Metabolic enzymes that are essential for infection, Such enzymes will be identified by use of transposon libraries 2) Redundant enzymes, which can be blocked in parallel. Relevant pairs of enzymes will be identified by use of metabolic models, and a search for bioactive molecules, with affinity for more than one target will be carried out using a novel screening platform. 3) Metabolic enzymes which are essential for expression of resistance mechanisms or spread of resistance plasmids in MDR bacteria. Putative targets for all three types of reactions will be validated using cell culture and animal models. INNOTARGETS will establish a joint training syllabus designed to widen the career prospects of the ESRs and to optimize their professional competences. It includes training through research, including secondments, network wide training courses and summer schools, self-directed learning, workshops and training through interaction with external partners and visiting scientists.

Mots clés : antimicrobials

Participants :
- Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Allemagne) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 252788.4 €
- Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (Espagne) — Partner, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 250904.88 €
- Abac therapeutics, sl (Espagne) — Partner, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 250904.88 €
- Oxford Brookes University (Royaume-Uni) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 303172.56 €
- Wageningen University & Research (Pays-Bas) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 265619.88 €
- University of Sassari (Italie) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 522999.36 €
- Naicons srl (Italie) — Partner, beneficiary, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 261499.68 €
- University of Copenhagen (Danemark) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 892566.0 €
- Porto conte ricerche srl (Italie) — Partner, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 261499.68 €