Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : HemNichMDS (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Georg Speyer Haus — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are heterogeneous clonal hematopoietic stem cell diseases mainly affecting the elderly (45/100,000 in >70 years). The prevalence of MDS is expected to rise mainly as a result of an aging population. MDS is characterized by ineffective production of mature blood cells with peripheral cytopenias and the propensity to evolve to acute myeloid leukemia. Most MDS patients rely on continuous blood transfusions resulting in significant costs to healthcare systems and, most importantly, secondary effects leading to complications and patient deaths. The only potential curative treatment for MDS is hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) transplantation, which is limited to younger patients with suitable donors (<10% of MDS patients). Increasing evidence indicates that myeloid neoplasms can be triggered by abnormal functional properties of the bone marrow microenvironment in mice. However, it remains to be seen whether this also applies to human hematopoietic neoplasms. Our work revealed that patient-derived mesenchymal niche cells are essential to propagate human MDS HSCs in vivo, thus highlighting the crucial role of the niche in human MDS. Moreover, our data indicate that human MDS hematopoietic cells may “educate” their niche environment into a self-reinforcing one. The goal of our proposal is to decipher the interplay between hematopoietic and mesenchymal niche cells in human MDS, and to assess innovative means by which we could target diseased cells to improve MDS patient outcomes. We will perform a comprehensive molecular characterization of highly purified primary mesenchymal niche cells to define new prognostic/therapeutic niche factors in MDS. More importantly, we will take advantage of our unique xenograft model of MDS to translate our findings into groundbreaking novel therapeutic strategies for MDS patients, by disrupting essential niche/MDS stem cell interactions.

Mots-clés : myelodysplastic syndromes,leukemia,bone marrow niche,mesenchymal cells,epigenetic,xenografts,mouse models,stem cell,drug target,therapy
Projet ERC : NEMO (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Inria
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498529.0 €

NEMO, NEtwork MOtion, is an inter-disciplinary proposal centered on network dynamics. The inter-disciplinarity spans from communication engineering to mathematics, with an innovative interplay between the two. NEMO’s focus is on stochastic geometry. This emerges as one of the most important new conceptual and operational tools of the last 10 years in wireless networking, with a major academic and industrial impact on architecture, protocol design, planning and economic analysis. Nevertheless, the state of the art is unable to cope with the dynamics introduced in recent and future network functionalities. NEMO’s aim is to introduce dynamics in wireless stochastic geometry. The dynamic versions of stochastic geometry to be developed will capture these new functionalities and specifically tackle two core promises and challenges of the future of wireless networking: that of ultra-low latency networking, required for enabling the unfolding of future real time interactions, and that of draining to the Internet the unprecedented amount and structure of data stemming from the Internet of Things. Several fundamental types of random network dynamics underpinning these functionalities are identified. General mathematical tools combining stochastic geometry, random graph theory, and the theory of dynamical systems will be developed to analyze them. This will provide parametric models mastering the complexity of such networks, which will be instrumental in addressing the above challenges. The aim is to have, through these dynamical versions, the same academic and industrial impact on wireless networks as static stochastic geometry has today. NEMO will leverage structural interactions of INRIA with Ecole Normale Supérieure on the mathematical side, and with Nokia Bell Labs and Orange on the engineering side. This will create in Europe a group focused on this mathematics-communication engineering interface, and to become the top innovation group of the field worldwide.

Mots-clés : stochastic geometry,dynamical systems,random graphs,information theory,queuing theory,wireless networks,cellular networks,internet of things,performance guarantees in networks
Projet ERC : KIRANDIS (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
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 : 1735205.0 €

NK cells are relevant to many kinds of disease, including viral infection, autoimmunity, cancer, transplantation and reproduction. The behavior of NK cells is controlled by a large number of different cell surface receptors, in a region on chromosome 19 called the LRC. Some of these receptors, such as KIR, are highly variable in gene number and allele sequence in different individuals. Many of them interact with HLA class I molecules, which are also highly polymorphic. To understand and exploit NK receptors and disease this project has three aims: 1. To investigate how variation in receptors encoded in the LRC influences viral infection and disease course. My laboratory is known for high-throughput KIR copy number and allele typing. Highly polymorphic KIR receptors are refractory to analysis by SNP typing and next generation sequencing (NGS) methods, so interrogation of large numbers of samples for accurate disease determination is not feasible. To overcome this problem we propose to develop digital PCR, sequence-based allele typing, imputation and NGS after sequence capture. Once underway, a large number of disease cohorts and matched controls will be investigated, spanning autoimmunity, infection and birth-weight, in collaboration with other laboratories. 2. To investigate mechanisms viruses use to evade NK cells. To facilitate this we have generated reporter cells that permit weak interaction of receptors with their ligands to be detected by production of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP). The evasion of NK cells by HCMV, vaccinia and HPV viruses will be studied. This work will be in conjunction with expert virology groups in the UK. 3. To identify novel ligands for LRC-encoded receptors. We will use the reporter cells to screen for ligands, initially by blocking binding with monoclonal antibodies. We intend to identify ligands for KIR and LILR, where these are unknown, especially focusing on activating receptors.

Mots-clés : natural killer cell
Projet ERC : NanoBeam (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 162030.0 €

NanoBeam will develop new directions in electron microscopy, materials, and optical sciences to control and characterize the ultrafast responses of polaritons and electronic states in materials. This will be achieved by (i) a ubiquitous control of slow and fast electron wave packets and (ii) realization of fully coherent light sources using shaped electron wave packets interacting with nanostructures. Quantum coherent control traditionally employs a sequence of optical pulses to direct the response of condensed matter systems towards a desired state, as a tool for novel quantum technologies. This control system has been only recently implemented in electron microscopes, by combining lasers and photoemission electron guns. However, this field is still it its infancy because it does not provide us with important aspects of the sample response such as spectral phase and time-energy evolution of electronic states in samples, which happens at the attosecond time scale. NanoBeam aims at quantum coherent control within electron microscopes by triggering both electron wave packets and their mechanisms of radiation, using carefully engineered nanostructures. This innovative and unconventional control system is to be achieved by an unprecedented combination of theory and experiment. On the theoretical side, I plan to develop a Maxwell-Schrödinger self-consistent numerical toolbox, to fully understand the interaction of electron wave packets with light and nanostructures beyond the routinely used adiabatic approximations, but also to utilize our expertise in theoretical modelling to propose novel methodologies for coherent control and shaping of the electron beams. On the experimental side, I intend to develop a novel spectral interferometry technique with the ability to retrieve and control the spectral phase in a scanning electron microscope to overcome the challenges in meeting both nanometer spatial and attosecond time resolution.

Mots-clés : electron photon interactions,quantum coherent control,spectral interferometry
Projet ERC : NANOSTORM (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Eindhoven University of Technology — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU/e
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1321587.02 €

Nanomaterials revolutionized the field of targeted cancer therapies introducing innovative approaches towards the molecular recognition of diseased cells. However, despite the large investments in nanotechnology-based drug delivery the translation into clinical applications is still unsatisfactory and up to date there are no actively-targeted materials approved for clinical use. One of the main reasons is the lack of knowledge about the behaviour of nanostructures in the biological environment that makes the rational design of effective drug delivery carriers extremely challenging. NANOSTORM proposes the use of an innovative optical imaging technique such as super resolution microscopy to visualize and understand the molecular interactions of nanomaterials with their cellular targets in unprecedented detail. We recently reported for the first time the ability of Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM) to image self-assembled synthetic materials in vitro with nanometric resolution. NANOSTORM aims to bring this to the next level, using STORM to unveil the structure-activity relations of therapeutic nanomaterials in the biological environment at the single molecule level. The knowledge arising from this investigation will provide novel design principles for the next generation of nanomaterials for targeted therapies. In particular, in the framework of NANOSTORM novel nanomaterials for the targeted treatment of prostate cancer will be synthesized and evaluated. This interdisciplinary research program will advance our understanding of nanostructures for targeted drug delivery and guide the formulation of novel materials for cancer therapy.

Mots-clés : nanomedicine
Projet ERC : NAPOLI (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Stockholm University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1000000.0 €

Nanoporous polymer membranes (NPMs) play a crucial, irreplaceable role in fundamental research and industrial usage, including separation, filtration, water treatment and sustainable environment. The vast majority of advances concentrate on neutral or weakly charged polymers, such as the ongoing interest on self-assembled block copolymer NPMs. There is an urgent need to process polyelectrolytes into NPMs that critically combine a high charge density with nanoporous morphology. Additionally, engineering structural asymmetry/gradient simultaneously in the membrane is equally beneficial, as it would improve membrane performance by building up compartmentalized functionalities. For example, a gradient in pore size forms high pressure resistance coupled with improved selectivity. Nevertheless, developing such highly charged, nanoporous and gradient membranes has remained a challenge, owing to the water solubility and ionic nature of conventional polyelectrolytes, poorly processable into nanoporous state via common routes. Recently, my group first reported an easy-to-perform production of nanoporous polyelectrolyte membranes. Building on this important but rather preliminary advance, I propose to develop the next generation of NPMs, nanoporous asymmetric poly(ionic liquid) membranes (NAPOLIs). The aim is to produce NAPOLIs bearing diverse gradients, understand the unique transport behavior, improve the membrane stability/sustainability/applicability, and finally apply them in the active fields of energy and environment. Both the currently established route and the newly proposed ones will be employed for the membrane fabrication. This proposal is inherently interdisciplinary, as it must combine polymer chemistry/engineering, physical chemistry, membrane/materials science, and nanoscience for its success. This research will fundamentally advance nanoporous membrane design for a wide scope of applications and reveal unique physical processes in an asymmetric context.

Mots-clés : porous membrane,polyelectrolyte,poly ionic liquid,asymmetric membrane
Projet ERC : QFAST (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Spanish National Research Council — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1803671.0 €

Nanoscopic spin excitations in confined geometries open a wide range of opportunities both for fundamental investigations and for applications. However, quantum magnetization dynamics in nanomagnets are still largely unexplored, especially when it comes to non-homogeneous spin configurations. QFaST is aimed at filling this gap by investigating quantum properties of magnetic vortices stabilized in low-damping ferromagnetic microdiscs at millikelvin temperatures. The project will be built upon quantum nanocircuits based on the high critical temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3O7 (YBCO) in the form of nano Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (nanoSQUIDs) and coplanar waveguide resonators. On the one hand, quantum spin dynamics from quaistatic up to nanosecond timescales will be addressed with few Bohr magnetons-sensitivity and 100 nm spatial-resolution by implementing a broadband on-chip YBCO-nanoSQUID microscope. This will be combined with the possibility of locally probing and controlling the temperature of the sample and sending radiofrequency pulses. Among other issues, such facility will allow studying zero-point vacuum fluctuations of vortex gyration. On the other hand, the physics of vortex gyration will be addressed by quantum cavity electrodynamics. The first step towards this goal will be the experimental realization of vortex-photon hybrid states using YBCO resonators. Such achievement entails the exchange of vortex and photon populations in the form of Rabi oscillations. Based on this, strong coupling of high order vortex modes and cavity photons will be explored putting emphasis in the possibility of transducing single photons into coherent spin-waves. These studies will open new opportunities for future research, e.g., to transduce between microwave and optical photons or to manipulate and detect single quanta of vortex gyration, which are relevant for quantum information applications and detection of dark matter.

Mots-clés : nanosquid,high tc superconductivity,broadband,time resolution,ultrasensitive magnetic,sensing,magnonics,magnetic vortex,spin dynamics,superconducting resonators,spin photon,interaction,quantum dynamics,quantum technologies
Projet ERC : ENLIGHTMENT (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Rovira i Virgili University — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : URV
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Nanostructured dielectric and metallic photonic architectures can concentrate the electric field through resonances, increase the light optical path by strong diffraction and exhibit many other interesting optical phenomena that cannot be achieved with traditional lenses and mirrors. The use of these structures within actual devices will be most beneficial for enhanced light absorption in thin solar cells, photodetectors and to develop new sensors and light emitters. However, emerging optoelectronic devices rely on large area and low cost fabrication routes such as roll to roll or solution processing, to cut manufacturing costs and increase the production throughput. If the exciting properties exhibited by the photonic structures are to be implemented in these devices, then they too have to be processed in a similar fashion as the devices they intend to improve. This research plan is aimed to develop photonic electrodes that will enhance light matter interaction based on wave optics phenomena while being fabricated with techniques fully compatible with today’s mass production approaches, allowing seamless integration of wave optics components in current devices. The objectives of this proposal are: 1) to investigate the fundaments of the enhanced light-matter interaction observed in devices that use wave optics elements. 2) To develop fabrication routes for large area and low cost photonic and plasmonic structures using techniques similar to those employed in industry, so they could be easily incorporated in technologies such as roll to roll. 3) To fabricate prototype solar cells, photodetectors and sensors on top of photonic electrodes, demonstrating improved performance without deterioration of other figures of merit in the device. The results of the research plan will advance the state of the art in nanophotonics structures, providing the path towards a new generation of large-scale and low-cost photonic architectures.

Mots-clés : photonics,nanostructures,solution processed optoelectronics,nanofabrication,enhanced light matter interaction
Projet ERC : EUDEMOS (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. London
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1508821.75 €

National governments operate under the growing constraints of European integration that limit the choices they can offer citizens and the policy instruments they can use. Yet, despite the centrality of political choice to the functioning of electoral democracy, we know very little about the consequences of constrained political choices for citizens’ engagement in democratic processes. Across Europe, an increasing number of citizens are supporting extreme parties or declining to take part in democratic elections. This project offers the first systematic examination of how the range and substance of political choices offered to citizens in the EU shape democratic perceptions and electoral behaviour. Understanding how citizens perceive and react to the growing constraints on domestic politics is crucial to a diagnosis of European democracy and for an evidence-based debate on reform of EU institutions. Building on the Principal Investigator’s award-winning research on electoral democracy and extensive experience of designing and analysing cross-national surveys and experiments, this project is a pioneering study of the consequences of constrained democracy. It uniquely combines a large-N cross-national analysis of citizens’ responses to mainstream party convergence and case studies of the ‘emergency politics’ of the Eurozone crisis with micro-level experimental work. This project aims to transform the study of citizens’ democratic attitudes and behaviour by focusing on the importance of political choice. By developing and testing a theoretical model of heterogeneous citizen responses to the constrained political choice, the project provides insights into why citizens turn against mainstream parties or exit democratic processes altogether. This further allows EUDEMOS to develop proposals for how institutions can be designed to facilitate citizens’ participation in and satisfaction with democratic processes in a multi-level European Union.

Mots-clés : democracy,european union,elections,public opinion,political parties,european integration,political choice
Projet ERC : NOVITREP (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Karolinska Institutet Innovations (Sweden) — Pays : Suède — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 10837.5 €

Natural epidemics and outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases are a growing problem internationally. RNA viruses remain under constant attention due to the recent Zika virus (ZIKV) outbreak with potential causal relationship with microcephaly of newly born babies and Ebola virus (EBOV) and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) causing life threatening hemorrhagic fever, demonstrating how zoonotic viruses pose a major global health concern. There is an ongoing need to discover novel therapies to battle these pathogenic viruses given that no specific therapy exists. Developing new antiviral treatments by targeting host cell proteins needed in the viral life cycle is an emerging strategy to improve therapeutic power and reduce acquired drug resistance. Based on the results from the ERC grant Genetic Networks as a tool for anti-Cancer Drug Development (GENECADD), we have developed potent inhibitors to DNA repair proteins that disturbs repair of oxidative DNA lesions. To our surprise, we observed, in collaboration with Public Health Agency of Sweden, that these inhibitors potently prevent ZIKV, EBOV and CCHFV viral replication in human cells, suggesting that these inhibitors may be used as antiviral therapeutics. Further investigation into the possible mechanism of action revealed that our inhibitors prevented the repair of oxidative damage to RNA. Here, the overall aim is to (1) further develop and optimize our inhibitors as a novel antiviral target and demonstrate proof of concept, (2) explore and secure IP (3) develop a business plan and (4) perform a market analysis. The overall goal is to develop general antiviral treatments made available to virus-infected individuals through a public foundation in low-income areas or through a company in the Western world.

Mots-clés : antiviral therapy,ogg1 inhibitors,proof of concept,oxidative dna damage