Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : LANTHANOPHOR (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HHU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 833101.6 €

Lanthanides (Ln) are critical raw materials and designated with a high supply risk by the European Commission. Their mining and purification have a considerable negative environmental impact and we urgently need sustainable and efficient recycling strategies for these elements. It was recently discovered that many bacteria use Ln for growth and utilize them in the active sites of enzymes. In addition, a Ln-binding protein with unprecedented affinities for Ln (Lanmodulin, LanM) has been isolated from one of these bacteria. The Ln-uptake mechanisms of these bacteria remain vastly underexplored, however, the involvement of polydentate ligands (chelators) to bind lanthanides — lanthanophores (lanthanide carriers) — has recently been established. For the first time, practical applications of chelators that were specifically designed by nature to bind, recycle and separate the technologically-indispensable lanthanides are in reach. Thus, the objective of LANTHANOPHOR is the identification and isolation of lanthanophores from the spent media of lanthanide-utilizing bacteria and the synthesis of short peptides based on the Ln-binding moiety in LanM. A comprehensive characterization of the lanthanophore including their lanthanide coordination chemistry, will contribute to our understanding how Ln are made bioavailable inside bacterial cells. The lanthanophore and the peptides will be evaluated for the use in Ln separation and recycling. I will further elucidate whether these ligands can be used in lanthanide bioremediation or for medical applications as chelators. The results of LANTHANOPHOR will advance the development of sustainable solutions and bioinspired applications that are urgently needed in the quest for new, environmentally friendly and faster Ln separation and recycling technologies. The unique combination of lanthanide biochemistry and coordination chemistry in my group opens unparalleled opportunities for discovery and characterisation of lanthanophores.

Mots-clés : lanthanides,siderophores,bacterial metabolism,bioinorganic chemistry
Projet ERC : P-ViTAL (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université Clermont Auvergne — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Laparoscopy allows the surgeons to treat pathologies such as cancer with considerably less trauma for the patient than classical open surgery. The laparoscope is a small camera inserted in the patient’s abdominopelvic cavity. Laparoscopy has been used for decades but still suffers from the impossibility of seeing the organs’ inner anatomy. This forms an important limitation because it slows down surgery, prevents finding some tumors and dramatically limits the use of laparoscopy. ViTAL (Virtual Transparency and Augmented Laparoscopy) is a concept specifically developed by our group of scientists, surgeons and radiologists as a solution to the current hidden-anatomy limitation of laparoscopy. The ViTAL concept is to modify the laparoscope’s video in realtime to emulate organ transparency and to highlight features invisible to the naked eye. The proposed project P-ViTAL (Precompetitive steps for ViTAL) aims at developing a precompetitive software implementation of ViTAL. Technically, ViTAL exploits information extracted from routine radiological images such as Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) acquired before surgery. Such a combination of visual information cannot be achieved mentally, even by experienced surgeons. Concretely, P-ViTAL has two objectives: 1) to develop a precompetitive prototype and 2) to create communication material. Objective 1) will be achieved by improving and extending the functional research prototype obtained in ERC project FLEXABLE. Two engineers will be hired to assist the team in this task. Objective 2) will be achieved by working with a communication agency. In particular, we aim at producing promotional brochures, images and video clips of laparoscopic surgery procedures achieved with ViTAL. P-ViTAL comes as the next important step towards our goal of creating a startup company. A feasibility analysis already confirmed that the market is open to the ViTAL technology and that it will be well-received.

Mots-clés : precompetitive,startup company,communication material,laparoscopic surgery,radiology,augmented reality,virtual transparency
Projet ERC : QML (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Technische Universität Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 665609.19 €

Large and diverse property data sets of relaxed molecules and crystals, resulting from computationally demanding quantum calculations, have recently been used to train machine learning models of various energetic and electronic properties. We propose to advance these techniques to a level where they can also describe reaction profiles, i.e. reactive non-equilibrium processes which traditionally would require quantum chemistry treatment. The resulting quantum machine learning (QML) models will provide reaction profiles for new reactants in real-time and with quantum accuracy. The overall goal is to develop a predictive computational tool which allows chemists to easily optimize reaction conditions, develop new catalysts, or even plan new synthetic pathways.

Mots-clés : chemical compound space,quantum chemistry,density functional theory
Projet ERC : 3DPROTEINPUZZLES (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : Lund University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2325292.0 €

Large protein complexes carry out some of the most complex functions in biology. Such structures are often assembled spontaneously from individual components through the process of self-assembly. If self-assembled protein complexes could be engineered from first principle it would enable a wide range of applications in biomedicine, nanotechnology and materials science. Recently, approaches to rationally design proteins to self-assembly into predefined structures have emerged. The highlight of this work is the design of protein cages that may be engineered into protein containers. However, current approaches for self-assembly design does not result in the assemblies with the required structural complexity to encode many of the sophisticated functions found in nature. To move forward, we have to learn how to engineer protein subunits with more than one designed interface that can assemble into tightly interacting complexes. In this proposal we propose a new protein design paradigm, shape directed protein design, in order to address shortcomings of the current methodology. The proposed method combines geometric shape matching and computational protein design. Using this approach we will de novo design assemblies with a wide variety of structural states, including protein complexes with cyclic and dihedral symmetry as well as icosahedral protein capsids built from novel protein building blocks. To enable these two design challenges we also develop a high-throughput assay to measure assembly stability in vivo that builds on a three-color fluorescent assay. This method will not only facilitate the screening of orders of magnitude more design constructs, but also enable the application of directed evolution to experimentally improve stable and assembly properties of designed containers as well as other designed assemblies.

Mots-clés : protein engineering,computational protein design
Projet ERC : OrgMIGRANT (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : University of Oslo — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UiO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498079.0 €

Large-scale immigration has introduced salient new dimensions of ethnic stratification in Europe’s rich, liberal democracies—successful incorporation of disadvantaged, newcomer immigrant minorities now poses a critical challenge for the 21st century. Despite a vast literature on labor market inequalities between immigrants and natives, the great majority of these studies is based on surveys of individual workers and yield limited knowledge about the role of firms and workplace contexts. Still, there has been no systematical attempt to exploit linked employer-employee (LEE) data to assess how work organizations are linked to economic assimilation across immigrant generations. Here I bring a new organizational focus on workplaces as key sites where contemporary dynamics of ethnic stratification unfold at the micro level. The objective of OrgMIGRANT is to demonstrate how work organizations both contribute to and reflect changing patterns of ethnic stratification across immigrant generations. We will study workplace segregation and probe whether, how, and why ethnic boundary salience and immigrant-native inequalities vary by organizational context, net of worker traits. To this end, we will use economy-wide LEE data from Norway and comparisons with selected high-income countries (i.e., Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Canada, and the United States). Our world-class data allow us to situate workers inside workplaces, enabling the study of the organizational context of immigrant-native labor market inequalities in high detail using state-of-the-art panel data techniques. OrgMIGRANT will be organized into three work packages: (1) organizational sources behind native-immigrant workplace segregation; (2) organizational determinants of immigrant-native inequalities within workplaces; (3) a cross-national comparison of organizational variation in workplace-specific immigrant-native pay inequalities and the size of within-job pay gaps (i.e., same occupation and workplace).

Mots-clés : organizations,immigration,assimilation,ethnic stratification,segregation,workplaces,firms,labor markets,administrative data,linked employer employee data
Projet ERC : LASER OPTIMAL (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Institut hospitalo-Universitaire de Strasbourg — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : IHU Strasbourg
Type d'entité : Autres
Financement ERC de l'entité : 115165.0 €

Laser Ablation (LA) was extensively investigated for its benefits as minimally invasive thermal therapy for tumor. Despite the LA pros as potential alternative to surgical resection (e.g., use of small fiber optics, echo-endoscope procedures and image-guidance without artifact), the lack of tools for safe and patient-specific treatment restrained its clinical use. LASER OPTIMAL offers a renaissance to LA for the practical management of challenging tumors (e.g., pancreatic cancer): it investigates and develops integrated solutions to achieve an effective and selective LA, that thermally destroys the whole tumor mass, while spearing the normal tissue around. The excellent ambition of LASER OPTIMAL is to achieve and merge: a) biocompatible nanoparticles (BNPs) injected in the tumor, to enhance the selective absorption of laser light; b) patient-specific anatomy of tumor and its surrounding, extracted from clinical images, to retrieve the optimal laser settings; c) accurate, fast and real-time heat-transfer model to simulate laser-tissue-BNPs interaction, predict and visualize the treatment dynamics; d) real-time temperature measurement system to monitor LA effects, account for unpredictable physiological events and tune the settings (closed-loop). The design of ex vivo and in vivo animal tests allows assessing the system performances and driving the possible workflow re-design. Finally, human trials are envisaged to prove the significant impact of the LASER OPTIMAL paradigm. The collaboration of researchers, engineers and clinicians will drive the use of this innovative strategy in clinical routine. The research on the patient-specific system for the mini-invasive tumors removal, and the ground-breaking insights on clinical use of BNPs will strongly impact on EU healthcare system and society, by creating a novel product. This paradigm is also embeddable in existing system of industrial partner, extendable to other procedures, thus able to encourage a dedicated market.

Mots-clés : laser ablation,gold nanoparticles,heat transfer model,laser tissue interaction,hyperthermal treatment of tumor,thermometry,medical imaging
Projet ERC : NANOBUBBLE (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université de Lille — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 256250.0 €

Lasers have found widespread application in medicine, such as for photothermal therapy. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), are often used as enhancers of the photothermal effect since they can efficiently absorb laser light and convert it into thermal energy. When absorbing intense nano- or picosecond laser pulses, AuNPs can become extremely hot and water vapor nanobubbles (VNBs) can emerge around these particles in tissue. A VNB will expand up to several hundred nm until the thermal energy from the AuNP is consumed, after which the bubble violently collapses, causing mechanical damage to neighbouring structures. In this project the aim is to make use of the disruptive mechanical force of VNBs to enable highly controlled and efficient delivery of macromolecules and nanoparticles in cells and biofilms. First, optical set-ups and microfluidics devices will be developed for high-throughput treatment of cells and biofilms. Second, VNBs will be used to achieve efficient cytosolic delivery of functional macromolecules in mammalian cells by cell membrane perforation or by inducing endosomal escape of endocytosed nanomedicine formulations that are functionalized with AuNPs. These concepts will be applied to tumorigenesis research, generation of induced pluripotent stem cells and modulation of effector T-cells for adoptive T-cell anti-cancer therapy. Third, contrast nanoparticles for cell imaging will be delivered into the cytosol of mammalian cells through VNB induced cell membrane perforation. This will enable more reliable in vivo imaging of labelled cells, labelling of subcellular structures for time-lapse microscopy and intracellular biosensing. Finally, [... confidential...] laser-induced VNBs will be used [... confidential...] for improved eradication of biofilms. This concept will be applied to biofilm infections in dental root canals and chronic wounds.

Mots-clés : drug delivery,phototherapy,gene therapy,nanomedicines,nanotechnology,biophotonics,nanoparticles,cell therapy,bio imaging,microfluidics,biofilms
Projet ERC : SpinRec (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Italian Institute of Technology — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Lesions of the spinal cord in humans are devastating and often lead to severe refractory forms of chronic pain. Also, enhanced sensitivity of spinal cord neurons – an abnormal condition called central sensitization – is crucial for the development and maintenance of chronic pain. Effective treatment of pain will depend critically on a better understanding of the electrophysiological changes that occur at spinal cord level. Still, the electrical activity of spinal cord neurons can be assessed only indirectly, unless invasive approaches are used. Due to serious anatomical and physiological hurdles, the availability of a non-invasive approach to measure the electrical activity of human spinal neurons (electrospinogram, ESG) is lacking. This is the problem that SpinRec aims to solve. The product resulting from SpinRec, compatible with simultaneous measures of brain activity (e.g. electroencephalography), will allow for the first time to directly explore spinal sensorimotor circuits in health and disease, and thereby allow cost efficient early diagnosis and stratification of patients with chronic pain and spinal cord injury.

Mots-clés : spinal cord,chronic pain,spinal cord injury,sensorimotor system,human,electrophysiology
Projet ERC : YlideLigands (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : University of Würzburg — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Lewis bases are a fundamental class of compounds that are of utmost importance in almost any chemical transformation. According to the HSAB concept, they determine important properties such as the stability or solubility of compounds or the selectivity of reactions. Yet, Lewis bases are used far beyond simple acid-base pairs. In coordination chemistry they act as efficient σ-donor ligands, which crucially affect the electronics of the metal and thus its reactivity. Additionally, bulky Lewis bases as part of Frustrated Lewis Pairs are applicable in bond activation reactions and also in catalysis. Typical Lewis bases are neutral compounds with a free pair of electrons, such as amines or phosphines. In contrast, carbon-centred Lewis bases such as carbenes have long been underestimated due to their usually high reactivity and sensitivity. Yet, the last decades have revealed a revolution in this context. Carbenes in particular have proven to be powerful reagents not only as ligands, but also in organocatalysis and bond activation chemistry. Bisylides and their dianionic congeners (methandiides) with formally two electron pairs at carbon are further classes of carbon bases that have started to find applications, but which are still profoundly underdeveloped. This project takes aim at the development and application of novel ylidic, carbon-centred Lewis bases. By means of a smart molecular design, systems with unusual electronic properties and donor capacities will be prepared and their reactivity towards main group element compounds and transition metal complexes will be explored. Employing experimental and computational methods a fundamental understanding of the electronic structure and its influencing factors will be provided. This will allow a manipulation and tailoring of the properties and reactivities and thus open applications such as in bond activation reactions or their use as electronically flexible ligands in catalytically active metal complexes.

Mots-clés : ligand design,s block metal,ylide compounds
Projet ERC : Revolution (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
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 : 2496521.0 €

Life is dependent on sugars made during photosynthesis. When plants colonized land ~450 million years ago they used a photosynthetic system known as the C3 pathway that still operates in the majority of species today. However, from ~30 million years ago over sixty plant lineages evolved a version of photosynthesis known as the C4 pathway that increases CO2 fixation efficiency by about 50%. C4 species such as maize and sorghum are now the most productive on the planet and achieve this by compartmentalizing gene expression between cell-types. As with other complex biological systems made up of multiple distinct cell-types, it has not been possible to understand how photosynthesis genes are regulated in specific cell-types of C4 leaves. In contrast to strategies being used by other groups, I propose to discover how specific cell-types of ancestral C3 leaves regulate gene expression, and then to use this information to determine how C4 photosynthesis operates. To achieve this, state-of-the-art approaches used on whole tissues will be adapted to study individual cell-types. Revolution will test the hypothesis that cell-specific gene expression in C4 leaves is mediated by pre-existing regulatory networks found in C3 species. Intracellular mechanisms regulating photosynthesis genes in ancestral C3 but also derived C4 leaves will be identified. In C3 leaves I wish to understand how some cell-types express photosynthesis genes whilst others remain photosynthetically repressed. In C4 leaves I wish to discover the extent to which cell-specific expression is based upon pre-existing regulatory networks in the C3 leaf. Revolution will therefore generate information of broad relevance to understanding gene expression in eukaryotes, and provide insight into mechanisms underpinning one of the major evolutionary transitions since plants moved to land.

Mots-clés : photosynthesis
Projet ERC : SULFAGING (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : Leibniz Association — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999905.0 €

Life originally emerged and flourished in hydrogen sulfide (H2S)-rich environment and literature published in the past decade started to recognize that H2S is a mediator of many physiological and pathological processes. Exposure to H2S can put animals into suspended animation-like state while the lifespan extensions by the dietary restriction are caused by H2S accumulation. Disturbances in its production are linked to the development of neurodegenerative diseases and cancer, among many others. A new post-translational modification (PTM) of cysteine residues called protein persulfidation (i.e., converting cysteine residues PSH to persulfides, PSSH) has been suggested as a unifying mechanism behind all these effects. Therefore, an understanding of protein persulfidation has not only a fundamental potential, e.g. unraveling new signaling pathways, but also a pharmacological potential in fighting aging and diseases. However, the underlying mechanisms of H2S-mediated PSSH formation are still unclear, mainly due to the lack of a reliable and selective methodology for PSSH labeling. Here, using cutting-edge methodology for PSSH labeling developed by our team, combined with proteomics, metabolomics and molecular biology, and by working on different model systems (cells, C. elegans, rodents) we intend to (i) gain high-resolution structural, functional, quantitative, and spatio-temporal information on PSSH dynamics and position this evolutionary conserved PTM in the global cell signalling scheme, particularly in relation to other cysteine PTMs, (ii) understand the intricate relation between aging and PSSH and (iii) identify the protein targets whose change of function by persulfidation is implicated in aging and disease progression. The ultimate objective is to pave the way for the development of innovative therapeutic strategies that will permit targeted redox control of cell metabolism, and delay aging and disease progression.

Mots-clés : thiol based redox signaling,persulfidation,sulfenylation,hydrogen sulfide,hydrogen peroxide,aging