Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : TREETOOL (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Copenhague — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : KU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Malnutrition affects one in three people across the world and is the number one risk factor in the global burden of diseases. Inadequate intake of fruits and vegetables is a key component of low quality diets, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Trees are a source of nutrient-rich fruits and leafy vegetables – and research shows that one promising solution to Africa’s malnutrition problem is to increase the planting of trees that provide nutritious fruits and vegetables. Currently, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are adopting large-scale tree planting programs as a climate mitigation strategy and to improve local livelihoods. As such, trees can provide a triple-win solution for nutrition, conservation and climate goals. However, the agencies and NGOs implementing these tree-planting programs often lack the necessary research and knowledge on which species to plant to maximize benefits for both the environment and people. Here, we will develop a ‘Forest and Trees Toolkit’ that can be used by extension workers and NGOs to make more targeted tree planting programs that also optimize people’s nutrition – thereby creating triple-win outcomes for nutrition, conservation, and climate goals. The toolkit will consist of; 1) a knowledge platform hosting information on nutritionally important tree species across areas and contexts, 2) an app to generate tree species portfolios adapted to local contexts, and 3) a user manual on how to use the app, including information on how to do live tree portfolio demonstration plots in community areas so that farmers can adopt the trees on their own farms. In short, the toolkit will be able to identify location-specific combinations of tree species that address month-on-month harvest (fruits and vegetables) and micronutrient gaps in local households’ diets. The development of the toolkit will be based on a unique high quality interdisciplinary dataset that we have collected and compiled during the ERC project FORESTDIET.
Projet ERC : AMADEUS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University College Dublin — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

A growing demand for clean water is driving the increased adoption of water-recycling and water-desalination, particularly in water-stressed regions. These processes are highly dependent on the use of membrane filtration technology. Efficient operation of these membranes is hampered by biofouling which is typically managed by chemical treatment. Amongst end-users in the water treatment sector, there is a market-pull towards more green/sustainable chemicals and this, combined with the limited effectiveness of existing biofouling control products, has created the substantial commercial opportunity described in this proposal. The unique idea in this Proof of Concept is to use natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) as a non-toxic and tuneable solution for biofouling mitigation. Preliminary data from the PI’s ERC grant, ABSOLUTE, has demonstrated that novel NADES formulations an effective, safe, scalable and economically viable solution for biofouling mitigation. The project deliverables include: (i) A composition for a NADES-based biofouling control product that exceeds the performance of the closest competing product and is superior in terms of reduced toxicity and higher biodegradability. (ii) A patent filing and a scalable commercialisation strategy. (iii) Data that confirms the cost benefits of the NADES composition in key industrial sectors. (iv) Demonstration data in to obtain feedback from end-users, partners and potential investors. These deliverables will advance the technology towards rapid commercialisation via a university spin-out company.
Projet ERC : ADSOILS (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université du Pays basque — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 5000.0 €

AdSoils project aims to evaluate, validate, and develop artificial advanced soil technology for its commercial exploitation as a tool for screening crops from belowground. As part of the Farm to Fork strategy, the European Commission aims at reduced “nutrient losses of at least 50% by 2030, while ensuring no deterioration in soil fertility. This is expected to lead to a reduction in fertiliser use of at least 20%”. The breeding and agrochemical sectors are now seeking ways for crops to acquire water and nutrient more efficiently, supplying seeds, compounds and inoculum that reduce soil contamination and make crops more resilient to climate change. Assessing the effectiveness of such strategies is a major bottleneck because current screening technologies are destructive costly and time consuming. Within the ERC consolidator grant 647857 “SENSOILs”, an artificial soil that becomes transparent during watering has been successfully developed. This technology, suited for small scale laboratory research, has shown great potential, enabling the discovery of new forms of mobility by soil bacteria and mapping root induced chemical gradients at microscale resolution. Adsoils project proposes to move a step further and to demonstrate that the AdSoils solution can be fabricated and applied in commercial screens for the discovery of agrochemicals and genomic regions involved in water and nutrient use efficiency. The project will identify cost-effective fabrication routes enabling a close mimic of natural soils and will produce a sufficient volume to validate the soil prototype with industrial end-users.
Projet ERC : TRIXi (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Linköping — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 60000.0 €

Disease-causing mutations on the X-chromosome (‘X-linked’ disorders) typically only affect men. However, due to a genetic phenomenon called skewed X-inactivation (sXCI), thousands of girls and women in Europe also develop serious and often life-threatening X-linked disorders every year. As there is no reliable test for sXCI in humans, women carrying mutations are typically unaware of their risk, and when symptoms do develop, diagnosis is delayed. We have developed a method for quick, cheap and accurate detection of sXCI; Tandem Repeat-based Identification of X-chromosome Inactivation (TRiXi). We will take TRiXi from a cutting-edge research method to an in vitro diagnostic test for sXCI in female carriers of X-linked mutations. Following requests from clinical colleagues, TRiXi has been used to assess disease risk or confirm diagnoses for multiple life-threatening X-linked disorders in patients from Clinical Genetics Units across Sweden, confirming its real-world clinical utility and the unmet need for a standardized assay for sXCI in the clinic. TRiXi has additional commercial potential as a Research Use Only test kit to serve the large and expanding field of research into female medical health. I have filed a priority patent application for TRiXi, joined the business incubator at Linköping University, and assembled a team with expertise in business, patenting, and regulatory affairs to successfully translate my innovation. Over 1 million women are carriers of mutations for serious X-linked disorders, in Europe alone. This represents a large patient population requiring a better standard of care, that can be delivered by TRiXi, and a significant and largely untapped commercial potential. Over the next 18 months, we plan to: (i) establish a regulatory strategy for each market path, (ii) validate the unmet need through thorough market verification, (iii) continue IP protection, and (iv) finalize technical improvements/tests to prepare TRiXi for commercialization.
Projet ERC : GALVANI SWIFT (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Neuroelectrics barcelona sl — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : NEUROELECTRICS
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The ERC Galvani project aims to revolutionize transcranial electrical brain stimulation (tES) therapy for epilepsy through a computational breakthrough. By combining the expertise of clinical researchers and computational neuroscientists, the project will develop personalized brain stimulation solutions integrating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG) data into advanced brain models. Neuroelectrics, a leader in medical neurotechnology, is implementing these solutions in a pipeline that transforms patient data into individualized brain models and optimized tES protocols in focal epilepsy. However, algorithms are highly dependent on the availability of high-quality MRI data and require time-consuming manual processing. Clinical translation at scale faces two key challenges: first, image head cropping and uneven data quality in MRI scans, and second, brain lesions, which deviate from normal anatomy and require manual segmentation by trained operators. These result in a more complex, time-consuming, and costly personalization process. To overcome these obstacles on the path from ground-breaking research to innovation, the SWIFT project introduces an AI-based deep learning approach that enhances MRI data quality and automates the handling of anatomical alterations, such as brain lesions, improving model accuracy and reducing processing time. To ensure translation into innovation, the project will develop a business strategy that addresses productization, regulatory, intellectual property, and commercialization challenges toward the goal of making model-driven tES therapy more scalable, cost-effective, and accessible to a broader range of epilepsy patients.
Projet ERC : SETS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université Érasme de Rotterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : EUR
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

This project focuses on media tourism: the phenomenon of people travelling to places associated with movies, television series and other forms of popular culture. Media tourism has gradually evolved into a multi-million-dollar industry, with far-reaching implications for the related locations, affecting their economy, environment and community. As a result, city governments increasingly seek strategies to manage both the positive and negative impacts of these often-capricious media and tourism flows. However, the extensive research data generated by the ERC project ?Words of Imagination? (WOI), which has been collected in multiple Western and non-Western cities (e.g., Kingston, Seoul, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro and Edinburgh), confirms (1) the potential of new media tourism initiatives and (b) the need for (humanities) research-based knowledge and critical and holistic advice to develop effective policies for sustainable and inclusive media tourism. Therefore, our goal is to set up a world-leading policy development agency called Setting the Scene (SETS) that is focused on providing municipalities around the world with a set of products and services to develop their media tourism industry in an environmentally sustainable, socially responsible and culturally sensitive manner. While several agencies advising government departments on the industry exist, none of them adopt a critical and holistic (humanities) perspective and focus on the sustainability and inclusivity of media tourism. The ultimate goal of this PoC is to demonstrate the (financial) viability and (technical) feasibility of the envisioned policy development agency SETS in assisting city governments with the search for tailored research-based policies concerning sustainable and inclusive media tourism.
Projet ERC : ClimateJusticeReady (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université autonome de Barcelone — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 90000.0 €

Cities in the Global North are increasingly adopting nature-centered and other green infrastructure interventions to respond to climate risks and impacts and enhance their adaptation and resilience capacity. Yet, plans for such green infrastructure (GI) and other urban greening interventions tend to underestimate risks of displacement for lower-income and minority residents – what myself and others have previously called green climate gentrification. Despite increasing recognition of this process and concerns for the displaced, few municipal green interventions are coupled with social provisions (such as social housing; resident-driven economic development schemes) to protect residents from displacement. Yet, predicting and preventing green gentrification is the only way to build a green resilience agenda that upholds the stated social and environmental goals of such plans and avoid green paradoxes born out of urban renaturing projects and which municipalities have expressed commitment to avoid. In this POC, I propose to further analyze the social equity impacts of climate adaptation and green resilience efforts and build on my GreenLULUs ERC in order to (a) create a replicable, interactive community- and policy-driven predictor index, tool, and analysis for green gentrification in the context of planned green climate-centered infrastructure and (b) test the early development of an actionable, pilot municipal policy and planning instrument, such as a climate-adaptation focused community land trust, a municipal green bond program for equitable climate resilience, a community-based stewardship fund, or green minority-owned green business seed grants (among others) to prevent green climate gentrification. These tasks will be decided and built in partnership with municipal governments and community groups based on pilot cities included in my finishing ERC project – Barcelona and Boston – so that this POC can support them in their work for more just green cities.
Projet ERC : ResisCHIP (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université autonome de Barcelone — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 115000.0 €

Drug-resistant infections are one of the greatest threats facing humanity. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) causes over 700.000 deaths each year. Furthermore, AMR is associated to reduced quality of life, increased hospitalization periods and medical costs. Misuse and over-prescription of antibiotics for human or animal treatment are one of the drivers of AMR. At the same time, the development of new antibiotics is virtually nonexistent. Hence, developing fast diagnostic methods to identify the optimal treatment is key to effectively fight AMR and increase survival rates of patients encountering life-threatening infections. So far, diagnostics rely on bacterial cultures, leading to slow turnaround times, which are linked to the preventive administration of broad-spectrum antibiotics, often inefficient and leading to worse disease outcomes and spread of AMR. Novel approaches such as DNA PCR-based diagnostic panels or next generation sequencing methods have been recently proposed to address this issue. However, they are target a limited number of pathogens and genes or require expensive equipment and highly-trained personnel. Furthermore, they require a culture step to reach detection levels, usually lasting a few hours, that can be critical for serious conditions. Recently, using technology derived from ERC StG and PoC grants, we designed a method to concentrate, purify, and isolate bacterial RNA in just 5 minutes. Here, we seek to develop and validate these tools, combined with a rapid RNA chip array with single-molecule resolution, to provide a culture-free, fast, and highly sensitive alternative to bacterial infection diagnostics from direct blood samples. Once developed, ResisCHIP will provide a tailor-made diagnostic kit with the capacity to identify thousands of genes and pathogens from a blood sample in less than 2 hours, allowing the rapid selection of the best treatment, improving AMR stewardess, and becoming a significant breakthrough in AMR diagnostics.
Projet ERC : SALAMI (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : CNRS Innovation — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 6500.0 €

Extreme conditions, i.e. high pressures, high temperature (HP/HT) or harsh chemical environments are extremely difficult to study and to observe undisturbed in the field and to replicate in the laboratory. This critically slows down the rate of discoveries both for several industrial processes or in environmental sciences. New types of transparent reactors are needed to implement fast-screening to speed up experimentations in harsh conditions. While microfluidics could address these limitations, current solutions do not propose simultaneously high pressure / high temperature capability, chemical inertness and transparency. A new microfabrication technology developed in the ERC CoG BIG MAC project, allowed the development of an innovative microfluidics platform made out of sapphire for pioneered applications in HP microbiology and bioprocesses (in-situ characterisation of geo- and HP- bioprocesses over a broad range of pressures (< 300 bar) and temperatures (<200°C). In the ERC PoC SALAMI project, I aim to extend this concept to a new family of microfluidic devices based on sapphire and diamond to meet the actual needs of potential end-users (kbar, > 700°C). These microfluidic reactors will be highly disruptive because they are both uniquely transparent and resistant to harsh pressure, temperature and chemical conditions. The ERC PoC SALAMI project will extend the frontiers of microfluidics with market-ready extreme conditions plug-and-play and user-friendly lab-on-a-chip for lab-scale and field-based non-specialist applications. It will enable measurements in extreme environments in multiple areas that do not currently benefit from microfluidics, thus opening new lines of questioning for research and simplified and cost effective diagnostic tools for industry, while HP/HT technologies miniaturisation and fast screening capability can greatly reduce costs for process optimisation.
Projet ERC : Sub-NK (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Institut de cancérologie Strasbourg Europe — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ICANS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

This PoC project seeks to develop a simple-to-implement self-assembled and injectable hydrogel material for the controlled co-delivery of our simili-CAR NK cells and stimulatory cytokines to improves treatment of both solid and liquid tumors. Similar to biologics delivery where monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are commonly administered by IV infusion due to regulatory criteria favoring such route which had limited confounding factors, the IV administration remains responsible for some over costs and clinical challenges including the need for dedicated infusion facilities, aseptic preparation of required infusion batches, extended infusion times, potential difficulties and risks with IV catheter. The subcutaneous (SC) administration is deemed to overcome many of these challenges and might appear as an attractive alternative to the IV administration. In addition, the SC route used for mAb administration was received with an overwhelming preference according to patients despite limited and reversible local adverse events induced by the rHuPH20. Alternative solutions are being evaluated through clinical trials such as the direct SC injection of mAbs without recombinant human hyaluronidase or using novel enzymes but none are currently being clinically-developed for cellular therapies. Moreover, those alternative SC methods induced large pharmacokinetic heterogeneity between patients confirming the need to develop novel alternative approaches to accelerate the development of SC mAbs formulation. Hence, in parallel to the biological approach, chemistry-based approaches, such as hydrogels have been proposed. However, to date, none of them successfully managed to be translated to the clinic; this can be explained by the absence of full biodegradability after injection or/and potential poor biocompatibility inducing inflammatory responses. Here, we sought to develop a novel formulation of functionalized-chitosans for controlled release of modified NK cells.
Projet ERC : SEMISOFT (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Don Carlo Gnocchi Foundation — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 27000.0 €

The goal of this proposal is the production of the SEMISOFT software and an associate web platform for spectroscopic molecular characterization and early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. SEMISOFT will be designed to decipher complex IR/Raman spectra which are currently hampering development of new clinical protocols and other technological advances. This will be achieved upon implementation of the innovative semiclassically approximate quantum dynamics methods, developed in the parent ERC-CoG SEMICOMPLEX project, which allow for a simplification of complex spectra and unprecedented quantum mechanical accuracy. To further increase the level of accuracy in SEMISOFT simulations, a new machine-learning based force field for biological systems will be developed and incorporated in the software.  The SEMISOFT web platform will be accessible to non-expert users from any browser without desktop installation and based on a flexible drop-down menu instructing the user step by step. The user will be able to reproduce IR/Raman spectra and identify molecular species in gas, liquid, or solid state. The web platform will find immediate application in a “freemium” version thanks to an industrial partner laboratory whose goal is to find biomarkers of Parkinson’s disease in human saliva. This pilot test will allow the team to tune the web platform for future commercialization.   An analysis of economic, social and market prospects will be performed to define a value proposition and an appropriate business model, by comparing the feasibility and relative impact of licensing, paid access through a user account, and spin-off. The definition of an appropriate intellectual property protection strategy will be also part of the project. SEMISOFT is expected to have a long-term impact too. Raman and related spectroscopies are widespread in laboratories for chemical characterization and this computational tool will boost spectroscopy applications in material, physics and chemical sciences.