Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : UniADLP (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Berne — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Unibe
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

3D printing, or additive manufacturing, has the potential to drastically transform fields such as architecture, aviation, sportswear, robotics, biomedical devices, implants, and tissue engineering. There is an increasing demand for 3D printing of reinforced composites and biological architectures. The 3D printing of composites is technically challenging due to the need to controllably orient and print microparticles. Commonly used 3D printing technologies achieve customizable prototypes using only a single material, and to date, few printers permit the incorporation of microparticles and living cells. Consequently, current methods allow only limited customization of the mechanical properties of printed objects. Acoustics permit microparticles to be manipulated noninvasively. In this proposal, UniADLP, we will develop a novel acoustic-based 3D printer with which microparticles can be aligned and selectively polymerized to develop a user-defined 3D printed object. We will assimilate homogeneous and heterogeneous microparticles while dynamically orienting them during the printing. This proposal will open up a new and exciting area in the field of additive manufacturing, using ultrasound to print reinforced architectures.

Mots-clés : acoustics,ultrasound,microparticle manipulation,3d printing
Projet ERC : BioTisSeal (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Twente — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Wound management is a routine part of medical practices worldwide, and delays in healing cause a significant clinical and economic burden. Current tissue sealant formulations that are used for wound care pose various limitations, including inability for filling in larger defects and release of toxic by-products (especially from synthetic polymers). Additionally, most of the commercial sealants provide no bioactive properties, or at best rely on bulk GF loading for inducing cell infiltration or tissue regeneration. The development of a tunable, bioactive hydrogel based tissue sealants thus provides an attractive opportunity as cell-instructive substrates for enhanced wound healing.  BioTisSeal aims to develop the technology for fabricating “off-the shelf” bioactive tissue sealants that can not only help in wound closure (or reduce blood loss), but also stimulate better healing. BioTisSeal will combine the tunable elasticity and adhesive strength of gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) pre-polymers with angiogenic growth factor (GF) specific aptamers that are capable of sequestering and concentrating GFs that are already present in the tissue fluid at the wound site. By coupling this to the controlled release behavior of aptamers, a spatiotemporal control of GF bioavailability is achieved for enhanced wound repair.  BioTisSeal will not only develop the technology to make this possible, but will also take vital steps to bring this technology to the market. By securing the IP, and analyzing the market connected to BioTisSeal technology, a fruitful basis for translation will be formed. The inclusion of both a leading wound care company and a clinician in the advisory board, will further ensure that BioTisSeal is optimally geared towards clinical translation.
Projet ERC : LINCURE (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Navarre — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 110000.0 €

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third leading cause of cancer-related death globally. Despite the therapeutic advances, innate and acquired resistance is still an adversity that needs to be overcome. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify more targeted and specific therapeutic approaches in order to increase success of the treatment and reduce the medical and economic burden of therapeutic failures. Numerous studies have been conducted to target the replication stress response, a hallmark of cancer and drug resistance, in cancer therapy. However, hitting this essential pathway can trigger deleterious and non-specific cellular responses. Our research introduces a novel perspective to this problem by focusing on the RNA components of the replication stress pathway. lncRNAs are untranslated RNAs whose emerging role in regulating gene expression has changed the way we look at genes and their functions. lncRNAs play a regulatory role in mechanisms of acquired tumour drug resistance. Moreover, their rapid turnover, tissue and pathology specificity make them ideal targets for effective therapeutic avenues that don’t bare the same toxicity as conventional approaches. Our dedicated ERC research has unveiled a lncRNA with remarkable biological properties. CRC cells subjected to replicative stress are addicted to its expression, representing a highly promising therapeutic target. Building on these novel findings, we propose LINCURE, a new therapy based on the inhibition of this lncRNA. lncRNA inhibitors will be used alone or in combination with the conventional 5-FU therapy to reach therapeutic efficacy for drug resistant CRC. We will integrate our unique knowledge with recent advancements in the successful development of delivery methods for RNA-based therapies, which have generated a surge of optimism in the realm of RNA therapeutics. The objective is to start a promising pathway toward translating our findings into effective clinical therapies.
Projet ERC : TUCAS-CO2 (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Leoben — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 115064.65 €

The catalytic reverse water-gas shift reaction (rWGS) will be a key technological process in the current effort to reduce the global CO2 emissions levels. It enables the utilisation of CO2 as an abundant and renewable carbon source and to transform flue gas into value added products. Coupling the rWGS reaction with renewable energy sources will facilitate the development of closed carbon cycles and to establish circular economy concepts. The main technological obstacles of implementing industrial rWGS processes are stability and selectivity issues of commercial catalyst materials at the required high reaction temperatures. In my current ERC project, we have developed a novel catalyst material based on perovskite oxides that solves these issues. Perovskites are utilised in various high-performance applications (e.g. high temperature fuel cells) and due to their compositional flexibility allow for a materials design approach. In first lab scale rWGS tests, our novel Co-doped materials even outperform commercial benchmarks. The design of commercial catalysts strongly differs from materials studied in fundamental research. Hence, several development steps are necessary to successfully utilise our perovskite-based catalysts in industrial processes. First, the active surface area has to be strongly increased by modifying the synthesis, enabling a scale-up of the catalyst fabrication. Secondly, the perovskites have to be transformed into structured catalysts utilised in industrial reactors (e.g. pellets). These modifications enable rWGS tests in a small pilot reactor and benchmarks of our material against industrial standards. In parallel, the commercialisation potential of our novel perovskite catalysts for rWGS processes will be evaluated. This will enable us to showcase our vision about CO2 utilisation to industrial stakeholders and to find potential partners for future development of real scale rWGS pilot reactors.
Projet ERC : CNECT-VAX (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Radboud University Medical Centre — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Radboud UMC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

CNECT-VAX will validate the technical and commercial feasibility of a new cancer vaccine platform that uses nanobodies targeting dendritic cells to co-deliver antigens in vivo. As of 2019, cancer affects over 19 million people worldwide and results in almost 10 million death annually, however, the treatment of patients remains a challenge. Immunotherapy options including dendritic cell (DC) based vaccines have become available, but the clinical efficacy of such treatment remains very modest and restricted to patient subsets. To overcome the limitations in the current state-of-art solutions and break barriers to achieve higher clinical efficacy, Dr. Martijn Verdoes proposes a novel molecular vaccine strategy that effectively delivers target antigens to DCs in vivo in the patient to concomitantly induce robust synergistic CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses. The technical feasibility of CNECT-VAX will be assessed both in vitro and in vivo, using monocyte-derived human dendritic cells (MoDC) and a mouse model containing humanized DCs respectively. In both systems, the functionality of DCs and the consequent T cell activation and immune responses will be measured. Subsequently, commercial feasibility will be determined by verifying IP position and strategy, performing in-depth market and competitor analyses, and finally consolidating these into a business plan to establish the best path to commercialization. Successful commercialization of CNECT-VAX could reduce the profound socioeconomic burden of cancer, extend and improve the lives of patients, provide the pharmaceutical industry with further collaborative opportunities, and stimulate further scientific research based on this platform to treat other pathogenic diseases.
Projet ERC : RUBICON (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Twente — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Effective tool support for the joint analysis of safety and security risks is long overdue. Risk management is an important activity to ensure the reliable functioning of technology, such as power plants and self-driving cars. Risks include both safety (= accidental failures) and security aspects (= malicious attacks). Historically, safety and security risks have been analyzed in isolation, despite often conflicting with each other. Effective decision-making requires considering safety and security risks in combination, as measures that increase safety may decrease security and vice versa.  My Consolidator Grant CAESAR has laid out the groundwork for a safety-security co-analysis framework: (1) A graphical risk model, mapping how vulnerabilities and failures propagate and cause system-level disruptions; (2) efficient algorithms to compute risk metrics, indicating how well a system performs in terms of safety-security. (3) algorithms that quantify the uncertainty of the analysis algorithms. In RUBICON, I will develop a PoC software tool that supports methods from CAESAR, advancing from TRL1 to TRL3. Key challenges to be tackled include: • Scaling up analysis methods to handle industry-size problems, by tailoring algorithms to work with specific subclasses that appear in practice. • Improve the interpretability of calculated outcomes. We will develop diagnostic feedback methods based on counter example analysis and importance factors. • Multi-objective optimization techniques. When dealing with multiple, interdependent parameters, conflicting requirements often arise, due to resource constraints and varying priorities. RUBICON will develop optimal strategies to effectively balance such conflicts, exploiting and advancing Pareto-analysis. The proof-of-concept tool will be tested and validated via lab and pilot studies across different industrial domains. A serious market analysis will lay out an actionable strategy to commercialize the PoC tool post-project.
Projet ERC : MONOBREAST (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Radboud University Medical Centre — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Radboud UMC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Although breast cancer screening and improvements in treatment have reduced breast cancer mortality by 30%, this disease still kills over 600,000 women yearly worldwide. To further reduce its morbidity and mortality, new and improved imaging modalities that improve the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer are needed. Over the last two decades, changes in x-ray detector technology have revolutionized x-ray-based breast imaging. Among other developments, new digital detectors made feasible the ERC Consolidator project BREAST4D during which a new imaging modality, dynamic contrast enhanced dedicated breast computed tomography (4D DCE-BCT) is being developed to personalize treatment of breast cancer. However, x-ray source technology has remained essentially unchanged for the last 100 years. The continued use of the x-ray tube as the source of x rays restricts the reduction in dose and the quantitative accuracy achievable with advances in the rest of the system. Very recently, however, a new monochromatic x-ray source has been developed that provides the necessary flux, x-ray energy, field of view, and portability, to be used in x-ray breast imaging devices. In MONOBREAST, the capabilities, applicability, and innovativeness of BREAST4D will be extended by introducing these monochromatic x-ray sources to breast CT imaging and combining them with the advanced image reconstruction method developed during BREAST4D. Resulting in a dose reduction of at least two thirds, such a monochromatic breast CT system will be applicable to every stage in the breast cancer chain, from screening with non-contrast BCT at doses equivalent to those of current screening with digital mammography and digital breast tomosynthesis, to static CE-BCT for diagnosis and the originally planned 4D DCE-BCT for treatment personalization. In addition, these new sources will not only result in substantially lower doses, but also in substantially higher accuracy with lower algorithmic complexity.
Projet ERC : Tune_IT (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Radboud University Medical Centre — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Radboud UMC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) recently became an important treatment modality for cancer . Since 2017, several chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapies approved by the FDA/EMA and more are expected to receive approval for clinical use. Currently, more than 250 clinical ACT trials are ongoing. Already in 2021, the market size was >$1 billion and is expected to grow tremendously to >$25 billion by 2030. ACT products require extensive ex vivo manipulation and expansion of patient derived T cells prior to reinfusion back into patients to attack cancer cells. Unfortunately, T cell exhaustion and loss of function after reinfusion form a major problem in currently used ex vivo expansion protocols.  The solution. Dedicated tuning of T cells during ex vivo expansion to preserve their anti- cancer function and prevent exhaustion. In the body, T cells are activated by antigen presenting cells (APC) to initiate an immune response. As patient-derived APC are often immunosuppressed, much effort is spent on developing 'artificial antigen presenting cells' (aAPC) to expand immune cells for ACT. We developed a unique polymeric aAPC platform, termed immunofilaments, that provide a highly flexible-, scalable-, GMP compliant- and affordable- solution for robust production of T cells for ACT. Our initial findings indeed indicate that we can diminish T cell exhaustion and outcompete products currently used in the clinic for ex vivo T cell expansion.  Tune-IT will validate the technical and commercial feasibility of this novel technology platform that exploits immunofilaments to significantly improve function and longevity of ACT products in patients. In Tune-IT, we will: 1) demonstrate that tuning of ex vivo cultured therapeutic T cells will prevent exhaustion and loss of tumor killing capacity after reinfusing T cells and 2) perform market and business case analyses to ensure commercial feasibility and market entry through Simmunext Biotherapeutics, a Radboudumc spin-off
Projet ERC : DAI (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Institut de physique du globe — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IPG de Paris
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

During the course of the PRISTINE proposal we have developed the first high precision high sensitivity stable isotope measurements for a variety of vital elements, including Zn, and Cu . With these technical advances we realized that we could monitor stable isotopic changes within organisms that open up a new way to study metal homeostasis as well as a new ways of detection diagnosis for diseases, in particular the Alzheimer's disease. In DAI, we will further explore make use of these unique technical advance to demonstrate the feasibility of using stable isotope geochemistry of metals to detect the early stages of the Alzheimer's disease. to reach this goal, we will combine our technical skills developed during PRISTINE with medical science to demonstrate this proof of concept and if succesful to file a patent. This would represent a unique way to apply isotope cosmochemistry to medical science fields.
Projet ERC : LiveBioThx (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Chypre — Pays : Chypre — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Immunotherapy, including immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), has revolutionized the treatment of multiple cancers. Anti-tumor responses are often durable but overall only a subset of patients receiving ICIs has exhibited sustained tumor shrinkage, whereas a substantial fraction receiving these therapies develops immune-related adverse events. The absence of dramatic responses is attributed to several factors, including abnormalities in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Specifically, many tumors such as subsets of colorectal, breast and pancreatic cancer, become stiff as they grow. Tumor stiffening causes compression of intratumor blood vessels, impairing blood flow/perfusion and oxygen supply. Hypoperfusion reduces ICIs delivery to the tumor and hypoxia induces immunosuppression, compromising immunotherapy. To restore these abnormalities, a novel therapeutic strategy to normalize tumor stiffness prior to ICIs has been tested in preclinical studies and in the clinic. This strategy repurposes clinically approved drugs to target the factors contributing to tumor stiffening, leading to a new class of therapeutics, known as mechanotherapeutics. However, drug-repurposing poses certain limitations as adding a new drug to the treatment regimen of patients with cancer is not feasible in many cases. As an alternative to these approaches, we propose here to test the ability of engineered live biotherapeutics in the form of programmable bacteria that offer unique advantages for delivering enzymes to normalize the TME. Even a small fraction of bacterial dose reaching the tumor is sufficient to colonize it and allow therapeutic concentrations of tumor-remodeling enzymes to be maintained for a long period of time. We propose to evaluate the ability of a novel live biotherapeutic product to improve perfusion and potentiate ICIs in preclinical tumor models of colorectal and breast tumors. This bacterial product has great potential for commercialization, and a plan is proposed.
Projet ERC : XPdeter (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The ecology of Xenorhabdus and Photorhabdus (XP) bacteria requires the production of bioactive natural products against invertebrates, vertebrates, bacteria, and fungi. XPdeter will especially selected metabolites for their application in agriculture. XPdeter aims to (i) validate promising compound classes in the lab and in the field in different bioassays, (ii) create and test a library of synthetically and more accessible derivatives, and (iii) produce the optimized metabolites biotechnologically in XP chassis strains. Ultimately, the production (iv) of these metabolites will be introduced in Xenorhabdus and Photorhabdus bacteria that already produce potent bioactive natural products in order to achieve extracts showing a combination of different bioactivities. The currently most promising metabolite class, its chemical synthesis and biotechnological production, were all developed as part of the ERC AdG SYNPEP (835108). Within XPdeter we will apply this knowledge to develop a natural product-based, environmentally friendly and economically feasible product that can be combined with or can even replace currently used synthetic and often harmful chemicals in agriculture.

Mots-clés : insect repellents,agriculture,insecticides,microbial natural products
Projet ERC : GlycoRoads (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

In the spirit of the various in silico de novo protein design products, GlycoRoads aims to introduce the world's first tool for de novo glycan design. Our cutting-edge screening platform will harness the power of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to analyse hundreds of thousands of glycan structures, extracting crucial structural information to populate a comprehensive database (DB). This rich repository of data will serve as the foundation for an AI-driven user interface, designed to interrogate the DB and guide the de novo design of glycans that can adopt specific target conformations, greatly accelerating the exploration of their applications. The growing recognition of glycans' critical roles in biology and materials science underscores the transformative potential of our project. If successful, it will unlock unprecedented capabilities to customize glycans for targeted applications, opening new avenues in the design of next-generation therapeutics and materials. Within the ERC GlycoFold grant, our team has designed glycans with precise secondary structures. GlycoRoads builds on this groundwork to make the strategic design of glycans accessible to both academic and industrial researchers. This goal requires the completion on three critical objectives: I) Enhancing the current MD-based screening platform, II) Generating and systematically cataloguing a vast array of data into a comprehensive and accessible DB, and III) Developing an AI tool to leverage the DB to accelerate the design of glycans for diverse applications. The anticipated outcomes of our project—a detailed DB of glycan structures and a user-friendly interface for its interrogation—offer substantial commercialization prospects. Together, they pave the way for a groundbreaking shift in de novo glycan design across various fields.