Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ERACHRON (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : University of Milan — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIMI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Given the alarming progression of chronic and relapsing infections in the last decades, and the even more alarming predictions for the upcoming years, it is urgent for chemists to be able to provide new molecular tools to study, and ultimately solve, these complex biological problems. Bacterial persisters are an elusive "dormant" phenotype that play a pivotal role in chronic infections, with mechanisms that remain to be fully unravelled. Current knowledge suggests that bacterial persisters are not genetically resistant to antibiotic treatment; they simply appear to shut down through a cascade of biochemical events called the stringent response (SR), becoming insensitive to current drugs. This subpopulation remains unaffected during the time of pharmacological treatment and represents a reservoir that sustains pathogen survival and resurgence. The goal of this project is to fill the knowledge gap between persisters formation and infection eradication, providing the community with potent and selective small molecular tools that can be used to challenge complementary survival mechanisms. I will adopt a combined approach targeting a specific cellular trigger of the persister phenotype with small molecules designed ad hoc in order to switch it off. The target is a bacterial protein involved in the SR cascade, whose activity is proposed to be allosterically regulated. Coordination propensity analysis of the dynamic behaviour of the target will highlight regulation sites exploitable to modulate and control the protein activity. Structure-based design, virtual fragment screening and chemical synthesis will operate in synergy. Experimental screening methodologies intrinsically rich in structural information, such as those based on NMR spectroscopy, will be privileged. The overarching goal is to identify molecules able to prevent the insurgence of the "dormant" drug-tolerant state and, possibly, revert the persisters already present to the "awake" drug-sensitive phenotype.

Mots-clés : bacterial persisters,computational chemistry
Projet ERC : EUGenDem (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Tampere University — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1579381.25 €

Given the crucial importance of European Parliament’s party groups to democratic representation in the European Union, it is surprising that there is limited empirical and theoretical understanding that relates to how they conceive of gender, gender hierarchies and gendered relations, or how they seek to address gender inequalities. Nor do we know what the conditions are for increasing a gender equal democracy in the EU in the face of the current political context shaped by political crises. This project aims to provide a systematic analysis of the gendered policies and practices of European party politics. The research comprises a comparative study of the eight European Parliament (EP) party groups and generates empirical findings about the significance of gender in the current party political transformations in Europe. Further potential lies in the key methodological innovation whereby the proposed project links informal institutions and discourses to affects and emotions, generating research designs with which the persistence of gender inequalities can be analysed more thoroughly than current gender and politics research allows. More nuanced conceptualizations, and theories about inclusive representation, gender justice and democracy at the transnational level, are a likely consequence of adopting an innovative methodological approach where empirical findings inform the theoretical level. Therefore, the project may have a high societal impact as it speaks directly to the current political crises in Europe, and provides an understanding of their gendered underpinnings. Thus, the key ambition of this research project is: based on a thorough empirical understanding of gender and party politics at the European Parliament to build novel methodologies, concepts and theories about inclusive representation, gender justice and democracy.

Mots-clés : gender,european parliament,political parties
Projet ERC : GLIOGUIDE (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Tartu — Pays : Estonie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Glioblastoma (GBM), is the most aggressive form of primary brain cancer and is diagnosed in 22,000 people per year in the EU. GBM is the most aggressive primary brain cancer and, by annual incidence, the most common type of malignant brain tumour. Despite aggressive treatment, the cancer always recurs. The average survival after diagnosis is 12 to 15 months, with less than 3% to 5% of patients surviving longer than 5 years. The current standard of care extends overall survival to ~14 -16 months. Current valuation of the global GBM treatment market is estimated to be €615 million per year, and it is predicted to increase to over €3.08 billion by 2024 (compound annual growth rate of 17%), based on the projected approval of new therapies including Opdivo and Optune. The main aim of this ERC PoC proposal is to probe the commercial viability of two types of tumour-targeted payload hybrids, one as an improved chemotherapeutic treatment, and the other as a precision-guided imaging agent for PET/MRI-based diagnosis. Our goal is for the former to become the clinician’s chemotherapy of choice in the adjuvant phase of GBM treatment; and for the latter to be incorporated into PET and MR-imaging procedures as a method for identifying and diagnosing GBM, as well as a companion test for stratification of patients for therapy.

Mots-clés : glioblastoma,targeted therapy,peptide conjugated compound,companion diagnostic
Projet ERC : RISeR (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : University of Leeds — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1978233.0 €

Global sea-level rise is one of our greatest environmental challenges and is predicted to continue for hundreds of years, even if global greenhouse-gas emissions are stopped immediately. However, the range, rates and responses to sea-level rise beyond 2100 are poorly understood. Current models that project sea-level rise centuries into the future have large uncertainties because the recent observations upon which they are based, encompass too limited a range of climate variability. Therefore, it is crucial to turn to the geological record where there are large-scale changes in climate. Global temperatures during the Last Interglacial were ~1oC warmer than pre-industrial values and 3-5oC warmer at the poles (a pattern similar to that predicted in the coming centuries), and global sea level was 6-9 m higher, far above that experienced in human memory. Through the RISeR project, I will lead a step-change advance in our understanding of the magnitude, rates and drivers of sea-level change during the Last Interglacial, to inform both global and regional sea-level projections beyond 2100. Specifically I will: 1. Develop new palaeoenvironmental reconstructions of Last Interglacial sea-level change from northwest Europe; 2. Provide the first ever chronological constraints on the timing, and therefore rates, of relative sea-level change that occurred in northwest Europe during the Last Interglacial; 3. Use state-of-the-art numerical modelling to distinguish the relative contributions of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets to global sea-level rise during the Last Interglacial; 4. Provide estimates of the land areas and exposed populations in northwest Europe at risk of inundation by long-term (2100+) sea-level rise, providing high-end scenarios critical for coastal-risk management practice. These ambitious objectives will result in a state-of-the-art integrated study of the most appropriate analogue for a critical global environmental challenge; future sea-level rise.

Mots-clés : sea level change,ice sheets
Projet ERC : ArcheoDyn (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : European Southern Observatory — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : ESO
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 456430.0 €

Globular clusters (GCs) are enigmatic objects that hide a wealth of information. They are the living fossils of the history of their native galaxies and the record keepers of the violent events that made them change their domicile. This proposal aims to mine GCs as living fossils of galaxy evolution to address fundamental questions in astrophysics: (1) Do satellite galaxies merge as predicted by the hierarchical build-up of galaxies? (2) Which are the seeds of supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies? (3) How did star formation originate in the earliest phases of galaxy formation? To answer these questions, novel population-dependent dynamical modelling techniques are required, whose development the PI has led over the past years. This uniquely positions him to take full advantage of the emerging wealth of chemical and kinematical data on GCs. Following the tidal disruption of satellite galaxies, their dense GCs, and maybe even their nuclei, are left as the most visible remnants in the main galaxy. The hierarchical build-up of their new host galaxy can thus be unearthed by recovering the GCs’ orbits. However, currently it is unclear which of the GCs are accretion survivors. Actually, the existence of a central intermediate mass black hole (IMBH) or of multiple stellar populations in GCs might tell which ones are accreted. At the same time, detection of IMBHs is important as they are predicted seeds for supermassive black holes in galaxies; while the multiple stellar populations in GCs are vital witnesses to the extreme modes of star formation in the early Universe. However, for every putative dynamical IMBH detection so far there is a corresponding non-detection; also the origin of multiple stellar populations in GCs still lacks any uncontrived explanation. The synergy of novel techniques and exquisite data proposed here promises a breakthrough in this emerging field of dynamical archeology with GCs as living fossils of the past of galaxies.

Mots-clés : dynamics of stellar systems,globular clusters
Projet ERC : SWEETOOLS (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : Czech Academy of Sciences — Pays : Rép. Tchèque — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : AVČR;CAS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1405625.0 €

Glycans are ubiquitous biomolecules found throughout all kingdoms of life. Early studies contributed considerably to our appreciation of glycan functions by showing that abnormalities in the glycosylation can develop into pathogenesis and severe dysfunctions. Despite the crucial role of sugars in many biological events we still do not have adequate tools to decipher their complexity. To unveil the mysteries in the rapidly emerging field of glycobiology we aim in this proposal to develop new tools that will help us to study and understand these important biomolecules. To realize this, we plan to combine the unique targeting capability of biologics with the inhibitory effect of small molecules into robust constructs with advanced properties. The biological part of the construct will be evolved using synthetic peptide libraries ensuring high selectivity toward particular sugar processing enzymes. The second part of the construct will consist of small molecular inhibitor warhead that will be designed and synthesized based on crystal structure-aided analyses. To merge these two moieties we aim to develop a new target enzyme–templated fluorogenic in situ click chemistry methodology that will enable us to easily monitor and screen whole peptide–small molecule bioconjugate libraries as highly selective inhibitors and manipulators of sugar processing enzymes. In addition, we aim to create new multivalent heteroglycosystems by using bioorthogonal reactions on peptide library scaffold. These structures will enable us to study polyvalent carbohydrate–protein interactions and to generate novel therapeutics such as influenza virus entry blockers. Our goal is to develop a new class of smart bioconjugate probes that will help us to answer fundamental questions in glycobiology. The outcomes of this project will significantly deepen our knowledge of glycoconjugates and in the long term, will allow for the design of efficient vaccines and for the development of selective therapeutics.

Mots-clés : click chemistry,glycosidase inhibitors,chemical glycobiology,synthetic peptide libraries
Projet ERC : GlycoSkin (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : University of Copenhagen — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCPH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1995199.0 €

Glycans decorate most proteins, cover cell membranes, and represent one of the four building blocks of life, together with nucleic acids, lipids, and amino acids. Yet, our understanding of how glycans influence the life of cells and organisms is limited, and only few functions have been molecularly dissected. Glycans present a huge structural diversity with species and cell- type specificity that underlie specific biological functions. However, more than half a century of research has been severely hampered by the complexity and technical difficulties with analyzing glycans. While, the glycome (all glycans in a cell or organism) is a difficult entry point for discovery, the glycogenome (all genes involved in glycosylation) in contrast is a feasible entry point, because most of the genes controlling glycosylation are now known, and there are fewer technical barriers especially with the emergence of gene editing technologies. Our research group has pioneered the “glycogenome entry” to functional glycomics using gene editing to simplify glycosylation in cells. My research group has pioneered a next generation approach using organotypic tissue models in combination with sophisticated mass spectrometry to decipher glycan functions. The tissue model has provided the first evidence that aberrant glycosylation in cancer directly induce oncogenic features, and that glycosylation of Herpes virus is essential for viral propagation. In this proposal, I will use step-by-step genetic deconstruction of glycosylation capacities in organotypic tissue models for broad discovery and dissection of specific structure-function relationships driving normal epithelial formation, transformation and interaction with the microbiome. Specifically, I will address: 1. How glycosylation affect and shape epithelial homeostasis and transformation 2. How regulation of glycosylation fine-tunes protein functions 3. How glycans influence host-pathogen interactions in “real” epithelial tissue models

Mots-clés : tissue models,epithelia,skin,differentiation,mass spectrometry,crispr,cas9,genome,editing,cell cell interactions,cell matrix,glycoproteomics,glycobiology,pathogen host,envelope virus
Projet ERC : GLYCANAL (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499801.0 €

Glycans, or oligosaccharides, are ubiquitous in biological systems. Because they decorate the surface of cells, they play a key role in virtually all cellular recognition processes and are implicated in almost every major disease. Despite their importance, the characterization of glycan primary structure lags far behind that of proteins and DNA because of their intrinsic isomeric complexity. The isomeric nature of the monosaccharide building blocks, the stereochemistry of the glycosidic bond, the possibility of multiple attachment points, and the occurrence of isomeric branched structures all make glycans difficult to analyze. Although mass spectrometry (MS) is one of the most sensitive approaches for glycan analysis, it has difficulty to distinguish all these various types of isomerisms. Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) combined with MS has demonstrated some ability to identify glycan anomers and regioisomers, but cannot easily distinguish isomeric disaccharides, for example. We have recently demonstrated that cryogenic infrared spectroscopy provides unique vibrational fingerprints of glycans that distinguishes all the various types of isomerism. When combined with simultaneous measurements of mass and ion mobility, these fingerprints can be tabulated in a database and used to identify a given glycan from a mixture. However, adding a spectroscopic dimension to ion mobility and mass measurements requires additional time, which hampers it use as an analytical tool. To use spectroscopic data for real-world glycan analysis, one must multiplex the measurement process and record the vibrational spectrum of many species simultaneously. This project involves designing and constructing an instrument that combines state-of-the-art ion mobility separation, cryogenic ion spectroscopy, and time-of-flight mass spectrometry to perform high throughput analysis of glycan primary structure. The success of this project would represent a tremendous breakthrough for glycoscience.

Mots-clés : chemical instrumentation,glycomics,glycoscience
Projet ERC : QUALITY (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Cambridge
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1191173.76 €

Good public policy should make society healthier, happier, safer, and more productive. Social scientists can help: they can look for the causes that promote or prevent these outcomes. Some do this by building models, which they test against large datasets using statistical tools. Others use non-formal tools, applied to a small number of cases: tracing processes, comparing cases, interviewing participants, writing ethnographies. Policymakers can then try to weigh up all this 'quantitative' and 'qualitative' evidence in order to judge the likely effects of a policy. There are established ways to weigh up the evidence from multiple quantitative studies, and for organizing the evidence from multiple qualitative studies. There are also excellent research designs that yield both quantitative and qualitative evidence. However, it's currently unclear how to weigh up the evidence from multiple qualitative studies, either on their own or together with quantitative studies. For example, how should one judge the efficacy of a policy when the findings from quantitative studies contradict the findings from qualitative ones? This poses a momentous problem: it exposes one's causal judgements to an increased risk of error, as it does any policies based upon these judgements. QUALITY aims to solve this problem by bringing together cutting-edge work in epistemology with the expertise of leading social scientists. It will analyse some prominent qualitative studies in sociology and political science, and it will contrast them with some prominent quantitative studies based on econometrics. QUALITY will then determine whether there is, despite their differences, a handful of basic heuristics for causal inference that underlie both types of approach. If there is, QUALITY will use these heuristics to develop a collection of templates for weighing up quantitative and qualitative evidence.
Projet ERC : HIGHWAVE (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : National University of Ireland — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : NUI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1462816.0 €

HIGHWAVE is an interdisciplinary project at the frontiers of coastal/ocean engineering, earth system science, statistics and fluid mechanics that will explore fundamental open questions in wave breaking. Why do waves break, how do they dissipate energy and why is this important? A central element of the work builds on recent international developments in the field of wave breaking and wave run-up led by the PI that have provided the first universal criterion for predicting the onset of breaking of water waves in uniform water depths from deep to intermediate. This work has also shown that the run-up of nonlinear waves impinging on a vertical wall can exceed up to 12 times the far-field amplitude of the incoming waves. These results have now opened up the possibility for more accurate operational wave models. They have practical and economic benefits in determining structural loads on ships and coastal/offshore infrastructure, evaluating seabed response to extreme waves, and optimizing operational strategies for maritime and marine renewable energy enterprises. This is a tremendous advance comparable to the introduction of wave prediction during World War II, and the PI aims to be at the forefront of this research effort to take research in wave breaking into fundamentally new directions. The objectives of the project are: (i) to develop an innovative approach to include accurate wave breaking physics into coupled sea state and ocean weather forecasting models; (ii) to obtain improved criteria for the design of ships and coastal/offshore infrastructure; (iii) to quantify erosion by powerful breaking waves, and (iv) to develop new concepts in wave measurement with improved characterization of wave breaking using real-time instrumentation. This highly interdisciplinary project will involve an ambitious and unconventional combination of computational simulation/theory, laboratory experiments, and field measurements of sea waves, closely informed by application needs.

Mots-clés : ocean waves,wave measurement,nonlinear waves,air sea interaction,wave loading,overtopping,morphodynamics,erosion,wireless wave sensor technology,computational fluid dynamics