Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : CrossPeriBrain (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Université d'Ulm — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999838.0 €

Diabetes is a leading cause for morbidity and mortality worldwide. In our fight against the diabetes pandemic, my team and I recently identified subgroups of humans that are predictive for future life-threatening complications even before diabetes onset. Classification into these new risk groups is currently purely based on extensive phenotyping, yet, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Of note, phenotypes of very high-risk persons are highly reminiscent of those from subjects with altered periphery-brain communication. I will combine ground-breaking experimental research in humans with latest data analysis approaches to delineate the causal relationship between altered brain-periphery communication and very high-risk phenotypes.  The 1st aim will reveal disturbances in the brain-periphery communication in high-risk persons. I will identify differences in the transduction of neuronal signals to the target organs, discover regulators from the brain to the periphery, and elucidate the regulation of underlying pathways. The 2nd aim will clarify signalling from the periphery to the brain. I will unravel the dynamic interaction between insulin and gut-derived hormones on the brain, identify signalling patterns that inform the brain about food intake and determine disturbances thereof in high-risk persons, and I will non-invasively characterize postprandial molecular responses in neurons. The 3rd aim develops a novel, non-invasive approach to identify high-risk persons by their altered brain-periphery communication. It will apply the above-generated knowledge to develop an algorithm-based integration of health data. Ultimately, my project will innovatively define the impact of altered brain-periphery crosstalk in the development of clinically relevant high-risk groups. It will set ground for novel approaches that optimize prevention and treatment of major complications and thereby improve future health, way beyond what is achieved by current approaches.
Projet ERC : EpiCortex (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Helmholtz Zentrum München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HMGU
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999643.0 €

The mammalian cortex is the most complex region of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions. Abnormal cortical development often translates into prominent neuropsychiatric diseases, which affect different neuronal subtypes with unique molecular and morphological features. Increasing evidence suggests that epigenetic regulation is essential for cortical development but how multiple regulatory layers are coordinated to specify distinct neuronal lineages in vivo remains unclear. My team and I recently applied single-cell RNA-seq, single-cell ATAC-seq together with cell-type-specific DNA methylation and 3D genome measurements to map the regulatory landscape of neural differentiation at a single embryonic stage in vivo. However, the process of neuronal subtype specification involves multiple distinct waves of differentiation over several consecutive days. Therefore, to decode the molecular logic of temporal cellular identity in the cortex, I will comprehensively dissect the interplay between gene expression, chromatin topology and epigenetics in specifying cell fate. In order to accomplish this, I will build upon my extensive experimental and computational expertise to (1) map the regulatory landscape of the developing mouse cortex across multiple regulatory layers and timepoints in single cells; (2) identify and validate cis-regulatory elements via a novel massive parallel cell-type specific reporter assay in vivo and (3) determine the functional consequences of perturbing enhancers and silencers using a highly multiplexed single-cell approach. Collectively, EpiCortex will provide unprecedented insights and establish new paradigms into the interplay between transcription factors, epigenome dynamics and gene expression in development. It will allow us to better understand the molecular logic of lineage specification in the mammalian cortex and more precisely define, compare and ultimately engineer cellular identities for therapeutic and regenerative purposes

Mots-clés : cerebral cortex,neurogenesis,development,single cell,epigenomics,in vivo,lineage specification,gene regulation,dna methylation,3d genome organization,crispr,transcription factors
Projet ERC : TRUSTED (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Helmholtz Zentrum München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HMGU
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999928.75 €

Obesity is a major health threat, but efficient pharmacotherapies are yet not available. First demonstrated by us to decrease body weight and hyperglycemia in obese mice, unimolecular co-agonists at the receptors for glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and the glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) efficiently corrected obesity and type-2 diabetes in recent phase 3 clinical trials. While GLP-1R/GIPR co-agonists are safe and effective, GIP regulation of metabolism remains enigmatic, with GIPR agonists and antagonists both decreasing body weight and blood glucose. My lab recently identified the CNS GIP receptor as a key regulator of energy metabolism, by showing that CNS loss of Gipr renders mice resistant to GIP-induced body weight loss. Emphasizing the relevance of this discovery, we showed that GLP-1R/GIPR co-agonism loses its superior body weight lowering potency over GLP-1R agonism in CNS-Gipr ko mice. My studies now finally enable assessment of how GIPR (ant)agonists and GLP-1R/GIPR co-agonists regulate energy and glucose metabolism. Whether GIPR (ant)agonists improve metabolism through central and peripheral mechanisms, which central regions/neurons/cells are targeted by GIPR (ant)agonists and by GLP-1R/GIPR co-agonists and the molecular mechanisms through which they control energy and glucose metabolism, remain unknown. In this project I will solve the conundrum of how GIPR (ant)agonists and GLP-1R/GIPR co-agonists improve energy and glucose metabolism. I will map regional GIPR distribution (Aim 1), identify the central target regions of GIPR (ant)agonists and of GLP-1R/GIPR co-agonists (AIM 2), delineate their cellular and molecular signal mechanisms (AIM 3) and assess functional relevance of GIPR signal modification in key neuronal/cellular populations and the periphery (AIM 4). My studies will significantly advance the knowledge on how GIPR signaling regulates metabolism and will illuminate the paths for the development of future obesity drugs.

Mots-clés : obesity and diabetes
Projet ERC : BUKA (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université de Varsovie — Pays : Pologne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1935074.0 €

The combination of methods from logic and graph theory has been extremely successful in the design of algorithms, in complexity theory, and other areas of theoretical computer science. A success story exemplifying the power of this approach is the recent development in the algorithmic structure theory of sparse graphs. In this line of research, structural results stemming from Robertson and Seymour’s graph minor theory, and the more recent sparsity theory of Nešetřil and Ossona de Mendez, were com- bined with logical methods in order to obtain a systematic understanding of tractability. An example result in this area states that every graph property definable in first order logic can be decided in linear time, for all planar graphs. Culminating a long line of research, Grohe, Kreutzer, and Siebertz gener- alized this result to all nowhere dense graph classes. Those are very general classes of sparse graphs, which include the class of planar graphs, classes of bounded maximum degree, or classes excluding a fixed minor. Moreover, this result completely delimits the tractability frontier for sparse graph classes. However, many classes are tractable, but not sparse. The recent twin-width theory, drawing on deep connections between logic and enumerative combinatorics, achieves an analogue of the result of Grohe et al. for all ordered graphs. Thus, algorithmic tractability is now understood in two contexts: of sparse graphs, and of ordered graphs. This project sets out to characterize all tractable graph classes. This requires developing a systematic understanding of the logical structure underlying algorithmic tractability. The tools I intend to apply and develop originate from graph structure theory, and from stability theory, one of the most successful areas in logic recently. The expected results will be of foundational nature, and of interest primarily to theoretical computer scientists, graph theorists, and logicians.

Mots-clés : finite model theory,structural graph theory,algorithmic model theory,graph algorithms,parameterized algorithms,model theory
Projet ERC : INASIA (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Varsovie — Pays : Pologne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2556730.0 €

The Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) is a term describing lithic assemblages dated roughly to 50–40 kya in the Near East, Central Europe and North-Eastern Asia, which show traits of the emergence of blade technology, traditionally associated with the expansion of modern human groups. Several sites with IUP traits have also been recently recognised in West Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan), but astonishingly they date to a period between 77 and 43 kya (Obi-Rakhmat, Khudji, Katta Sai 2, Khodjakent, Kuksaray 2, Ertash Sai 2). Through this project, we aim to answer the question of whether there were indeed modern human groups who lived in Western Central Asia at this time and left behind lithic assemblages with IUP traits. This would make them the earliest known modern human migration waves into Eurasia. Alternatively, these assemblages were produced by Neanderthals or even Denisovans, who inhabited Central Asia prior to modern human expansion. This would question the widely repeated hypothesis of a relationship between blade technology and modern human groups. To answer the question, we will study new cave sites in the region to collect palaeoecological, zooarchaeological and palaeoanthropological data. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we plan to reveal not only who made these IUP assemblages, but also study their subsistence strategies and settlement continuity between 77 and 43 kya within the changing palaeoenvironmental conditions. By answering this question, we will either confirm an early modern human migration to Eurasia and challenge the current paradigm of Euro-Levantine blade technology emergence, or alternatively challenge the other major paradigm of a direct relationship between blade technology emergence with modern human expansion. In either case, we will clarify to what extent the phenomena we call the Upper Palaeolithic “revolution” was driven solely by modern humans, and whether it was stimulated by interactions with Neanderthals and/or Den

Mots-clés : human evolution modern humans neanderthals denisovans lithic studies
Projet ERC : BREAKFREE-Sy (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : CERCA Institution — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CERCA;I-CERCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 732875.0 €

For over 50 years, the tools for diagnosing, preventing, and treating syphilis have seen minimal progress, partly due to limitations in bacterial cultivation. Existing tools were primarily drawn from research on early-stage syphilis and evidence extrapolated to severe forms of the infection, leaving important unmet needs like the lack of predictive markers for neurosyphilis and mother-to-child-transmission, limited evidence on treatments for these conditions, and challenges in monitoring treatment failure. This project aims to shift the paradigm by demonstrating that the diverse manifestations of syphilis are not merely random infections in different bodily compartments but are intricately linked to unique bacterial traits and host responses that necessitate specific tools. Our goal is to discover manifestation-specific biomarkers, repurpose antibiotics for tailored treatments, and pioneering TPA isolation methods for treatment monitoring. Taking advantage of a unique network of collaborators in areas with a high incidence of severe syphilis, I will examine how severe clinical manifestations relate to genomic variations in TPA strains and with host humoral responses. A groundbreaking pan-proteomic array will allow identifying markers linked to clinical phenotypes and it will open avenues for discovery of new antigens as vaccine candidates. Furthermore, I will exploit the established expertise of my team on drug repurposing and conducting randomized clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of alternative antibiotics to cure patients with neurosyphilis and syphilis in pregnancy. Finally, I aim to pioneer methods for the first-time isolation of TPA from patient samples and conduct antimicrobial resistance testing in treatment failures. The resulting tools will be a tremendous resource for preventing adverse outcomes like neurological sequelae, stillbirth, congenital syphilis and treatment failure, especially in low-middle-income countries where most complications occur

Mots-clés : neurosyphilis strains,treponema neuroinvasive adhesin,treponema circulating strains genome,treponema deep proteome,congenital syphilis in the pacific,antibiotic resistant treponema pallidum treponema outer membrane proteins,
Projet ERC : PersoNINpain (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université d'Aalborg — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1618278.0 €

Chronic pain (CP) is the most prevalent disease worldwide and is a major societal challenge. Different people with the same pain condition experience it differently. Irrespective of its origin, CP is maintained by altered connectivity between brain regions, which can be modulated towards normality by effective treatment. Several pharmacological and non-pharmacological strategies exist to treat pain, but 40% of individuals remain symptomatic despite treatment. Current treatment for CP is not personalised, being delivered in a standardised regimen irrespective of patients' brain network status, which partially justifies therapeutic refractoriness. Non-invasive neuromodulation (NIN) techniques such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) are used in the long-term treatment of a wide spectrum of brain disorders as an alternative to medication-exclusive regimens. NIN can modulate altered connectivity towards normal patterns and relieve symptoms with minimal side effects, but to date its application has also been non-individualized, which equally impacts its therapeutic potential. I propose a comprehensive package of studies using measurements of local-to-global brain connectivity to individualize pain treatment. By probing different brain regions by single pulse-TMS and reading the subsequent brain oscillatory responses by electroencephalography, one can screen potential treatment targets and classify them according to their efficacy potential in a pre-treatment session. This will allow the identification of the best cortical region to be used as treatment target by rTMS, thus providing a personalized choice of the ideal entry-spot to drive brain global connectivity towards normalized patterns for each patient. With the development local-to-general brain connectivity metrics guiding NIN treatment, PersoNINpain will provide an innovative and ground-breaking approach to transform the treatment the world’s most impactful health condition - chronic pain.

Mots-clés : chronic pain,neuropathic pain,neuromodulation,neuropathic pain,parkinson disease
Projet ERC : NEWSUSE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université de Varsovie — Pays : Pologne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1993125.0 €

Populism, polarisation, and wavering support for democratic norms are pressing threats to the EU. NEWSUSE seeks to explain and remedy these threats by bringing the problem of insufficient news consumption to the forefront. Rather than focusing on echo chambers, misinformation, or filter bubbles, I argue that very low news use among citizens is a drastically overlooked problem, which leads to voting misaligned with individual interests and susceptibility to manipulative, populist and misinformed rhetoric. Brexit and the 2016 US election are key examples. Because greater news exposure can make citizens more resilient to the various democratic threats, it is urgent to address the fundamental question: How to sustainably incentivize the use of quality news? Toward this end, NEWSUSE advances a theoretically driven and applicable model that accounts for individual, algorithmic and social factors influencing news (non-)use and – therefore – also the approaches to promoting news intake. Building on this model, NEWSUSE designs validated computational tools to increase people’s consumption of quality news, pinpoints whether it is the citizens, social contexts, and/or recommender systems that need to be tweaked, and tests the democratic effects of increased news use across political contexts and social media platforms. NEWSUSE relies on cutting-edge multidisciplinary methods, combining quantitative and qualitative, observational and over-time experimental designs and incorporating the latest advances in computer and computational social science, the first project to apply these innovative approaches conjointly and comparatively. NEWSUSE advances academic knowledge and its findings will be crucial for scholars across disciplines, (non-)governmental organizations, and policymakers working on algorithmic transparency. It is only when we know how different factors together prevent or enhance news exposure, will we be able to make citizens and democracies more resilient.

Mots-clés : news media,news avoidance,media exposure,media effects,social media,digital platforms,algorithms,polarization,misinformation,software tools,attitudes,democracy,democratic resilience,citizenship
Projet ERC : MEOW (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Institut météorologique finlandais — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FMI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1997101.0 €

We develop a new type of a global plasma simulation model with adaptive charged particle kinetic physics for the Mercury-solar wind interaction. Mercury’s solar wind interaction, or space weather, is unique in the solar system due to spatially small and temporally fast magnetospheric scales, airless solid body with a large conducting core, a tenuous surface-originating exosphere and the closest distance to the Sun of the planets. These features mean that Mercury is an ideal "compact-sized magnetospheric solar wind interaction laboratory" for spacecraft and model studies compared to Earth's much larger magnetosphere. Since Mercury's plasma environment is populated by a unique composition of exospheric heavy ions mixed with the solar wind, the magnetosphere is much smaller than at Earth and under stronger solar wind conditions, studying Mercury reveals new information on space weather processes in general. The main scientific objectives of the BepiColombo (BC) two-orbiter mission en-route to Mercury include the investigation of the structure and dynamics of the Hermean magnetosphere and exosphere. The new model to be developed in this project is based on high-performance computing and an adaptive algorithm for charged particle kinetic effects. This enables efficiently resolving Hermean space weather processes and the coupled, complex solar wind-magnetosphere-exosphere system at detail beyond current global models. The new model is applied in the interpretation of observations by BC with the focus on the role of charged particle effects in the physics of basic space weather processes.

Mots-clés : mercury,solar wind,exosphere,magnetosphere
Projet ERC : PARTISAN (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Université de Vienne — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Uni Wien
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1998641.0 €

Partisan prejudice exists when citizens hold negative attitudes towards party supporters. Such prejudice is widespread: many people have stereotypical views of and dislike the supporters of certain parties, sometimes amounting to outright partisan hostility. Partisan prejudice is a challenge for liberal democracy. It deepens societal rifts, lowers social trust, weakens the acceptance of elite compromise and leads to discrimination and social ostracism. This challenge is urgent at a time of political division and democratic backsliding. Yet, partisan prejudice is barely studied, particularly in Europe. PARTISAN will provide a novel theoretical framework and rigorous empirical evidence for understanding partisan prejudice, with the ambition of fundamentally altering how voters and parties are studied in multiparty systems. The theoretical framework posits that objective characteristics of party supporters form the basis of partisan stereotypes, but that these linkages are filtered through individual perceptions and moderated by party- and country-level characteristics. Based on this framework, this project will provide ground-breaking evidence on the prevalence and origins of partisan prejudice and assess its political and societal consequences, including for political participation, discrimination and social cohesion. PARTISAN will also provide political and societal actors with evidence on three ways to reduce partisan prejudice: interparty contact, recategorization and social norms. PARTISAN will implement new measurement tools in a new twelve-country survey and in experiments conducted in population-based surveys and in the field. Innovative experimental designs will be used to rigorously assess the origins and consequences of partisan prejudice, as well as potential remedies. Studying a little-studied phenomenon using diverse methods, PARTISAN will significantly extend our knowledge of partisan prejudice, what effects it has and how its impact can be minimized.

Mots-clés : partisan prejudice,partisanship,stereotypes,discrimination,political parties,party systems,political attitudes,social groups,negative partisanship,affective polarization