Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : MIRRA (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université de Gand — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Climate change, and its impacts on ecological, agricultural, and other societal systems, is often studied by relying on temperature data derived from official weather stations. Yet, these data do not capture microclimates, influenced by vegetation, soil and topography, operating at spatial scales relevant to the majority of organisms on Earth. Detecting and attributing climate-change impacts with confidence and certainty will only be possible if we better quantify how temperatures are changing in forests, mountains, shrublands, and other remote habitats. Policy makers and land managers urgently need open access to more microclimate data. Here, we develop an open access, integrative Microclimate Real-time Remote Applications (MIRRA) instrument with an associated authoritative, online database to solve this problem. There is an urgent need for a novel, miniature and simple self-assembly open access device with free online data access. The overarching aim of MIRRA is to develop a miniature and simple self-assembly instrument for instantaneous, long-term and remote measurements of microclimate with optimized power usage and data transfer via cellular connectivity. All data become automatically available to everybody online, and MIRRA will thus substantially increase the availability of open access real-time microclimate data from all over the world. As a proof-of-concept showcase, and building on ERC StG FORMICA, we will install the MIRRA system in 45 forests spread across Europe. With the dawn of such novel sensor technology for the long-term, low-cost, real-time and remote sensing of microclimates, we lay the foundation and open a wide range of possibilities to map microclimates in different ecosystems, feeding a next generation of models. This system will serve a multitude of societal needs, now and into the future as climate change accelerates.
Projet ERC : HyperSKIN (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Day one societa a responsabilita limitata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DAY ONE
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 30000.0 €

The increasing incidence of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC, 330,000 new cases in Europe, 2022), due to the increase of elderly population, unprotected sun exposure and still poor prevention, is a huge public health concern worldwide. Recurrences and consequent need for repeated surgery are mainly associated with incomplete excision and positive tumor margins. Also, typical surgical risks of poor scarring, infection, pain, and time-consuming histopathological analysis demand innovative approaches, like light-based therapies, considered safe and effective options for many NMSC cases. However, none of traditional and new approaches perform intraoperative control, thus leading to cancer progression and recurrence. To overcome the lack of intraoperative monitored NMSC treatments, I benefit from a spectral imaging system I pioneered in my previous ERC project, for intraoperative monitoring of light-based treatment of tumors. HyperSKIN leverages the current NMSC management needs, and the ERC-proved technology to develop a contactless device that revolutionizes the decision-making regarding excisional margins before and during the procedure, with instantaneous feedback on the skin regions to be preserved and the tumoral parts to be removed. In this PoC, I will perform the technical-commercial feasibility study to move the HyperSKIN system to the market. I will prototype the HyperSKIN system and establish contacts with stakeholders for HyperSKIN validation and integration in clinical practice. The PoC will set a market and health technology assessment, the IP protection strategy, and identify the best business model and exploitation strategy for valorising the know-how.
Projet ERC : PREDICT (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Day one societa a responsabilita limitata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DAY ONE
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 40000.0 €

Problem: In 2022, more than half a million lung cancer patients worldwide carrying KRAS mutations faced therapy resistance, a trend on the rise. Such cancers resist standard treatments and targeted therapies, leading to an average survival of 1.2 years post-treatment. The heterogeneous genetic background of KRAS-driven cancer adds further complexity, hindering personalized treatment due to resistance unpredictability.  Solution: Our Proof Of Concept (PoC) project PREDICT provides a personalized treatment roadmap for KRAS-mutant lung cancer, available through knowledge and genetic tools generated thanks to our ERC CoG grant KARMA, which was aimed at the understanding of the molecular mechanisms regulating the formation of the functional KRAS complex at the cell membrane. Using genetically-defined KRAS-mutant cell lines, our lab can facilitate direct comparisons of RAS-targeted treatments, including approved and trial drugs. This effort will empower clinicians to recommend effective strategies based on a patient's specific KRAS mutation, accounting for initial and potential acquired mutations and/or mechanisms of resistance. The model will evolve through in vitro testing, analyzing resistance mechanisms, and predicting therapies based on the patient's mutational landscape. Importantly, our approach eliminates the need for animal models.
Projet ERC : LEILA (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Day one societa a responsabilita limitata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DAY ONE
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 30000.0 €

The need of a minimally invasive alternative to traditional cancer surgery is pushing the global market of thermal ablation devices, mainly for treating delicate organs (brain, prostate, breast, pancreas, lung) in inoperable patients. With its fine and flexible applicator, laser ablation (LA) was successfully used in lesions difficult to access with conventional surgery, and its market is expected to show the highest growth rates in the next 5 years. However, crucial aspects and clinical needs are still unsolved for LA: the poor reproducibility of the procedure outcome and the lack of mini-invasive and accurate intraprocedural control make LA strongly relying on the doctor experience. The lack of control causes subtotal tumor coverage, thus bringing cancer progression and recurrence. To solve this issue, in the ERC LASER OPTIMAL project that I lead, it was developed the first platform which integrates a closed-loop control strategy of LA with multiplexed fiber optic sensors (FOSs) at the millimetric-scale, and modulates the laser power based on the measured tissue temperature. LEILA is the integration of this control platform with a novel smart applicator embedding the laser delivery and the temperature monitoring with FOSs. In this PoC proposal, the technical-commercial feasibility study will be performed to move the LEILA system to the market. The PoC will allow prototyping the system, establishing contact with stakeholders for testing and integration of LEILA in existing medical systems, and preparing a ready-to-use tool. The PoC will also set the market and health technology assessment, the business model, and the IP protection strategy with identification of the best exploitation strategy for valorising the know-how.
Projet ERC : PROCT (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Day one societa a responsabilita limitata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DAY ONE
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 40000.0 €

With 1.3 million new cases worldwide, prostate cancer (PC) is the second most common cancer in men, causing more than 350,000 deaths each year. It is so common that about 1 man in 8 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime. As for any degenerative disease, early diagnosis is crucial to improve patients’ quality of life and reduce the mortality rate. However, the gold standard technique (biopsy) is affected by large diagnostic errors, representing a major limitation to achieve adequate management of PC.  The PROCT project aims to validate in pre-clinical stage a semiautonomous robotic approach to PC diagnosis based on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), which aims to exactly pinpoint the target lesion and analyse it through an AI and robotic-based imaging setup. This can comprehensively visualize the lesions at the microscopic level in vivo, without taking any physical sample of the prostate. The resulting virtual microscope slide will allow urologists to explore and analyse various suspicious areas in the same procedure without the need to rely on the physical examination of the biopsy samples.  PROCT is a paradigm shift in PC biopsy, that is poised to turn a subjective and operator-dependent procedure into a safer and more accurate diagnostic tool. This solution is obtained by merging the AI-based target identification with robotic pointing developed in the previous PoC project PROST with a micro-optical coherence tomography sensor capable to acquire images of the prostate through a needle at cellular-level resolution.  The PROCT prototype will be laboratory validated and benchmarked to assess its usability and real time capabilities. It will be also tested and validated on ex-vivo animal tissues and in the cadaver laboratory.
Projet ERC : ABuMic (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Day one societa a responsabilita limitata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DAY ONE
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 30000.0 €

ABuMic aims to address a critical challenge of our society: the transition of formulated products to a safer and more sustainable industry. There is increasing pressure on the industry, both from the public opinion and regulatory bodies, for healthier food products and more environmentally friendly paints and coatings. As a result, in the coming years many formulated products will need to be re-formulated. This will come at a huge cost for the industry, because by and large, product development is still done by trial-and-error. This means that the formulated products industry needs more than ever the capability to predict formulation performance for rapid screening of new products. The current challenge is that processing flows and end-use produce flow conditions that are not accessible with existing methods for materials characterization. With the ABuMic device, a formulation scientist will be able to design a new product more quickly and efficiently, thereby lowering the cost of new product development, and supporting the transition to healthier and more sustainable products.
Projet ERC : PYPAINT (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Day one societa a responsabilita limitata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DAY ONE
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 30000.0 €

The art market has always had to deal with an endemic problem: counterfeiting. All art is historically at risk of being copied and sold fraudulently by counterfeiters. A report by the Swiss Fine Art Expert Institute estimates that over half of all the artwork in circulation is fake. All this creates an incalculable loss of value for the entire market, including artists, auction houses, insurance companies and of course the end buyers, who often find themselves spending considerable sums of money only to end up with worthless pieces or even get into legal trouble. Works of art are generally not protected with dedicated security devices that uniquely identify the work itself. The problem historically originates from the requirement not to visibly alter the artwork itself and from the relative lack of security of existing non-invasive solutions. Our team at Politecnico di Milano aims to develop a printable new anti-counterfeiting system (PYPAINT) based on carbon-based nanostructures with a specific optoelectronic response, which makes it possible to create an artwork's unique identifier code that is invisible to the human eye. Thanks to the invisibility of inks, it is possible to print them directly on the artwork, or on a transparent label. The inks will be printed through an inkjet printer forming a pattern of spots able to create almost infinite codes readable using a special optical reader. Without the need for heavy metals or toxic compounds, PYPAINT is environmental-friendly. The verification of PYPAINT allows access to a remote database to guarantee not only its authenticity but also its history and relationship with the rest of the artist's works, creating a true digital reliable medium, available to the owner. It only takes a few seconds to identify and retrieve all the information of interest through a multi-level security protocol. With PYPAINT we aim at contributing to securing the extreme value of artworks in Europe and worldwide.
Projet ERC : CATSYNEX (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Day one societa a responsabilita limitata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DAY ONE
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 30000.0 €

The CATSYNEX project, born from the ERC-StG SAC_2.0 project, addresses the pressing need for scalable production of single-atom catalysts to revolutionize industrial catalysis.  While homogeneous catalysts dominate pharmaceutical synthesis due to their precision, they suffer from recovery, instability, and cost issues. Heterogeneous catalysts offer easier separation but struggle with lower degree of selectivity and activity when used in pharmaceutical reactions.  Single-atom catalysts bridge this gap, offering atomically precise control during catalyst formulation, enhanced catalyst stability, higher turnover frequencies, and reduced material costs. However, current synthesis methods limit single-atom catalysts to laboratory scale. CATSYNEX aims to change this by developing scalable SAC production methods.  The scientific validation involves optimizing SAC synthesis for uniform dispersion and high catalytic activity, ensuring reproducibility across batches and scaling to industrial quantities. Catalytic performance will be tested against traditional catalysts to showcase SAC superiority at different scales (from mg to kg), and over multiple catalytic cycles. Business validation includes analyzing IP landscape, regulatory framework, market appeal, and manufacturing economics.  Through CATSYNEX, SACs are poised to become valuable tools for various chemical industries, driving innovation by making pharmaceutical synthesis more efficient, more sustainable, and cost-effective, and addressing some of the pressing critical challenges of the 21st-century manufacturing processes.
Projet ERC : TNext (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Day one societa a responsabilita limitata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DAY ONE
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 34000.0 €

Big-data management is currently placing a high demand on both the hardware performance level, e.g. access latency, storage capacity, cost performance, and on the cognitive level, e.g. data processing, architectures, and algorithms. The ever-growing pressure for big data creates urgent global challenges like energy consumption and memory efficiency. New device architectures beyond the von Neumann paradigm are demanded which are inspired by the biological synaptic operativity towards the so-called neuromorphic computational scheme. The memristor is the more viable device emulating the synaptic behavior. Advanced materials are required to make memristor-based circuits energetically sustainable and outperforming. The integration of 2D semiconductors in memristors is a promising path to tackle these global challenges within the neuromorphic computation. In this scenario, here we propose a single-element memristor cell design based on tellurene (2D tellurium) mimicking artificial synaptic behavior and thus enabling memristor applications. Tellurene offers solid advantages over other 2D players owing to the structural and chemical simplicity, the low thermal budget of its synthesis, and the versatility to adapt to rigid and flexible layouts. Our goals are the scalable production of a tellurene standard and its integration in single memristor cells and in cross-bar arrays of memristors aiming at the fabrication of a neuromorphic circuits. The peculiar production process makes tellurene fit to delamination and transfer to any kind of surface, either rigid or flexible, flat or curve, and readily available for testing in edge-computing applications like environmental sensing signal elaboration. The translational purpose is to further up technology transfer of the developed products (either materials and processes) by retrieving stake-holders among small- and medium enterprises addressing the AI computing market.

Mots-clés : tellurene,2d tellurium,memristor,neuromorphic,electronics
Projet ERC : hiPSCmore (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Day one societa a responsabilita limitata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DAY ONE
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 50000.0 €

In hiPSCmore (read hiP-See-More), my team and I will engineer fluorescent sensors in the DNA of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) so we can “See More” during high-throughput imaging screenings (imHTS) for drug discovery and regenerative medicine.  Since hiPSCs can differentiate in most cell types in the human body, they are the ideal cell source for more predictively screening therapies. Yet, hiPSCs are expensive to maintain and require external reagents to visualize pathophysiological changes, which adds to the screening cost and complexity. In fact, the major hurdle in adopting hiPSCs for imHTS has been the price increase from <0.10 $/data point to 2+ $/data point.  In the context of our ERC Stg, we genetically encoded fluorescent sensors for cell structure, function, and cell cycle progression directly into hiPSCs for in-vitro modeling of heart development. With those sensors, we can visualize pathophysiological changes through reagents provided by the cells themselves. Thus, the more experiments we conduct, the cheaper they become. We believe this is the strategy to bring hiPSCs into imHTS, where testing millions of compounds vanishes an experiment's marginal cost. Like software. To explore this opportunity, we envision three main objectives. 1. Technology feasibility. We will scale up the production of our SeeMore hiPSCs and validate their cost-effectiveness in drug screening and regenerative medicine applications. 2. Business feasibility. We will analyze market dynamics and customer preferences in the drug screening and regenerative markets to define the most efficient go-to-market strategy. 3. Executive management. We will work with stakeholders in our advisory board to delineate IPR, business strategy, and future fundraising opportunities for a SeeMore spin-off company.  Through these activities, the SeeMore spin-off will incorporate the right mix of tech development and business savvy in its own DNA, so it can "seize more" of the HTS market.
Projet ERC : MABank (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Day one societa a responsabilita limitata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DAY ONE
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 35000.0 €

Stem cells led to effective cures for diseases of blood and epithelia. However, in the case of diseases affecting muscles, connective tissue or brain, significant challenges persist for expansion of a sufficient number of corrected cells, delivery and engraftment. Even when these problems will be solved the prospective per-patient cost of the treatment (up to 2M$) will make such therapies unsustainable for NHS. We developed protocols of cell therapy using mesoangioblasts (Mabs), vessel associated progenitors that, despite promising results in animal models, showed modest efficacy in patients. To address this, we transplanted autologous dystrophic Mabs expressing a small nuclear RNA engineered to skip dystrophin exon 51, that enters and corrects also neighboring nuclei of the multinucleated muscle fiber, thus bringing dystrophic production to therapeutic levels. A Phase I/IIa trial is currently running. Even in case of success, the cost would remain prohibitive. Through the ongoing ERC ADG 884952-UniMab, we are completing the development of immortal, immune-privileged Mabs from dystrophic patients thanks to genome editing of HLA and the expression of tolerogenic proteins. In this PoC project we will produce universal Mabs from healthy donors and will study the feasibility of producing and storing a large amount of universal Mabs through a bank of universal donor Mabs from healthy patients, ready to be corrected for the specific genetic mutation and injected into the patient following the motto “one serve many”. Available cells, a GMP-grade lentivector, expressing the wt cDNA of the mutated gene and a mouse model for pre-clinical tests would be sufficient to start a trial even for extremely rare diseases that currently lack even the hope of a therapy. This work will enable the business exploitation of the MABANK technology, by creating a company with a GMP biobank that may operate internally and make cells available to clinicians and Biotech companies.
Projet ERC : PROFTH (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Day one societa a responsabilita limitata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DAY ONE
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 40000.0 €

The PROFTH project aims at developing the robotics and AI technologies to enable focal therapies for prostate cancer (PCa) using the robotic positioned developed during the ERC-PoC PROST. PCa therapy is lagging about 10 years from e.g. kidney and breast therapies, that has shifted from invasive surgery to percutaneous ablation of the tumour. Several trials are acquiring the clinical evidence to support the shift from radical prostatectomy to PCa focal therapy, considering the multifocal aspect of PCa and the need to preserve the surrounding anatomical structures. Key to focal therapies is the ability to accurately and repeatably positioning the ablation device in the PCa area and to achieve the minimal tissue removal that satisfies the safety margins around the tumor and leaves the other structures untouched. The problem of accurately positioning a biopsy needle in the PCa area has been solved by the PROST project, thus we want to build on this capability to set the basis of PCa focal therapy. To achieve this goal, PROFTH will address three main objectives: 1. definition of the joint requirements between clinical needs, capabilities of the current ablation devices and positioning accuracy of PROST; 2. development of the digital twin of the pelvic area to integrate the medical information of the patient; and 3. develop a planning algorithm that will compute the position of the ablation devices in the patient PCa. We will test the developed algorithms with laboratory and ex-vivo experiments using the ablation systems available at the University Hospital of Verona.