Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : AFFIRMRelationships (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Amsterdam University Medical Centers — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Transgender health is an area of increasing focus for researchers and medical practitioners across Europe, in part due to rapidly escalating numbers of people identifying as transgender. A crucial oversight in this area is that very little research has examined how gender-affirming hormone therapy, the most common form of medical intervention for transgender people, shapes psychosocial functioning and ultimately social relationship experiences. Given the paramount importance of social relationships to health and well-being, evidence for psychosocial effects of gender-affirming hormone therapy is vital to ensuring health equity for transgender people, who suffer from alarmingly high rates of social disruption and suicide risk. I draw together independent strands of research on biological effects of hormones from social neuroendocrinology and health influences of psychological and sociocultural factors from social psychology and epidemiology to propose a novel biopsychosocial model linking gender-affirming hormone therapy to psychosocial functioning in transgender people. Drawing upon this model, I propose a programme of research involving four complementary work packages, triangulating across a variety of novel and cutting-edge research methods. This work will be guided by three key aims: A) to isolate causal pathways from a biopsychosocial model linking gender-affirming hormone therapy to psychosocial functioning, B) to empower transgender people to give voice to their own personal and relational experiences in the context of gender-affirming hormone therapy, and, C) to guide policy and practice for gender identity services in line with the informed consent model, directing focus to the improvement of psychosocial functioning and social relationship outcomes. This interdisciplinary programme of research will sit at the forefront of gender-affirming healthcare and treatment for transgender people.

Mots-clés : transgender and gender diverse social relationships hormone therapy psychosocial functioning social stigma
Projet ERC : GOLEM (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Groningue — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1194088.75 €

The “Graphs and Ontologies for Literary Evolution Models” (GOLEM) project will create statistically robust models explaining how fiction evolves, based on the analysis of millions of stories and the effects they have on readers. This is the first time in history that this kind of data is available on such a large scale, thanks to the fact that readers all over the world use digital and social media to share fictional stories and to comment on them, e.g. on fanfiction websites or on publishing platforms like Wattpad. GOLEM will use computational literary studies and cultural evolution theory to create accurate models of how the (formal and content-related) cultural traits found in fiction spread and combine. The basis of this evolutionary analysis of fiction will be a knowledge graph database – an infrastructure of interlinked data about stories and reader response – which will be used to test hypotheses related to the accumulation of cultural traits in stories and their effectiveness in achieving cognitive and emotional effects on readers. State-of-the-art machine learning algorithms and advanced statistical modelling tools will be employed to create a major breakthrough in computational literary studies, possibly also contributing to the revision of cultural evolution theories. By focusing on the relations between stories in five different languages, collected from countries in all continents, GOLEM will provide an unprecedented insight into how storytelling, one of the most ancient cultural systems, evolves. Literary history and criticism have offered refined accounts of how fiction works, mostly relying on case studies of limited extent. It is now time to provide robust statistical evidence of the anthropological function of fiction and of how it adapts to different circumstances and cultures, empowering readers to cope with their cultural or societal contexts.

Mots-clés : computational literary studies reader response cultural evolution
Projet ERC : PlatforMuse (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Groningue — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

How are streaming and social media platforms changing the working conditions and creative practices of music artists around the world? How can we better understand the transformative impact of “platformization” through the lens of music? Online platforms - from Amazon to YouTube – have been both celebrated and criticized. The COVID-19 pandemic has only further entrenched these platforms in our lives. PlatforMuse takes music as a medium through which to examine the impacts of platformization. It offers the first cross-national analysis of this transformation as understood by music artists. To date, most research into platformization is limited to case studies of particular platforms in particular countries. PlatforMuse provides a global perspective that is sensitive to the complexity of platformization. The three national contexts that make up this project – the Netherlands, South Korea, and Nigeria – represent three very different models and stages of platformization. PlatforMuse asks: How might the everyday experiences of music artists in diverse locations challenge some of the assumptions about how platformization proceeds, and in turn, help us to generate a truly global understanding of cultural production in the platform era? The PI has extensively researched music platformization in North America, Europe and Asia and is thus uniquely suited to realize the ambitious aims of this global project. The project is embedded in a multidisciplinary research network and an advisory board comprised of academics, industry experts and artists from the Netherlands, South Korea and Nigeria. Through innovative methods PlatforMuse promises to bridge and build upon diverse fields of study; including popular music studies, platform studies, media/cultural industries research, and ethnomusicology. The aim is to develop an integrative framework for theorizing the global platformization of music and to open up new research agendas for the study of culture in our ‘platform society’.

Mots-clés : cultural industries creative labour media studies platform studies cultural production music industries music streaming ethnomusicology
Projet ERC : MagmaWorlds (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Université de Groningue — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

The first low-mass exoplanet spectra from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have toppled previous understanding on their internal structure and phase state, suggesting that mixing between the deep planetary interior and atmosphere affects key observables. A newly emerging class of volatile-rich exoplanets, bridging the classes of super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, promises to enhance observational insights into atmosphere-interior feedbacks but requires novel models to interpret and predict observables to distinguish different scenarios. MagmaWorlds will chart the diverging evolutionary pathways of the emerging volatile-rich and volatile-poor super-Earth populations, and thus enable to trace the historical chemical evolution of super-Earth exoplanets. My team and I will build a numerical framework of the chemical evolution of super-Earth exoplanets, bridging the ultra-hot conditions of atmosphere-stripped lava worlds with the climate of temperate volatile-rich super-Earths. This will allow us to carry out targeted simulations for the most observationally accessible low-mass exoplanet population. We will develop self-consistent planetary evolution sequences over geologic time, spatially resolving how mixed-phase interior structure, liquid-solid tidal forcing, and species-fractionating escape from primary (H-He-rich) to secondary (C-N-S) to rock vapour (Si-Mg-Fe-Na) atmospheres affect present-day exoplanet observables. The MagmaWorlds project will deliver chemically and physically self-consistent spectra, C-H-N-S fractionation between interior and atmosphere, planet/star contrast ratio, transit/eclipse depth, and structural relations over billions of years that can be used to constrain the chemical evolutionary history of super-Earth exoplanets. The simulations will inform JWST, Ariel, and ELT observing proposals and the interpretation of observational data, opening time and internal chemical structure as new dimensions to inform and interpret exoplanet surveys.

Mots-clés : planetary physics atmosphere formation magma oceans planetary interior
Projet ERC : eHSCT (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université Vie-Santé Saint-Raphaël — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a groundbreaking therapy that has transformed the treatment of severe hematological and immune disorders. It involves infusing healthy or corrected hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) into a patient to restore their blood cell production. Despite its remarkable success, HSCT is currently limited to the most severe cases due to several key challenges. These bottlenecks include inefficient HSC mobilization, limited engraftment leading to insufficient clonal diversity, and the toxicity of chemotherapy-based conditioning regimens. This comprehensive proposal outlines a transformative approach to address these limitations head-on, enhancing both the efficacy and safety of HSCT. The project aims to:  1. Uncover the key factors governing HSC engraftment and egress: Using optimized genome-wide gain- and loss-of-function in vivo screening in HSCs, I will identify the pivotal players responsible for HSC engraftment and egress. These insights will inform the development of innovative mobilization strategies and the engineering of HSCs to confer a transient engraftment advantage.  2. Establish a mobilization-based conditioning regimen: I will exploit the temporary niche depletion induced by mobilizers to optimize a genotoxic-free regimen. By harnessing cell surface profiling data and potentially using mobilizer-resistant variants generated through directed evolution, I will tilt the competitive balance between freshly mobilized and infused HSCs, favoring the engraftment of infused cells.  This project seeks to pioneer avant-garde methods that enhance mobilization and engraftment while avoiding the use of toxic conditioning regimens, thereby addressing major HSCT limitations. These advancements hold the potential to transform HSCT into a safer, more broadly applicable therapy, extending its benefits to a wider demographic and diverse healthcare settings. This aligns with the ultimate objective of achieving global health equity.

Mots-clés : hematopoietic stem cell,engraftment,transplantation,mobilization,chemotherapy free,conditioning,gene editing
Projet ERC : OLA-TOPSENS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Helmholtz Center for Information Security — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CISPA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499456.0 €

Considering the rapid growth of data sets and network sizes over the past decade, there is little doubt that the future of computation is distributed. One central aspect lying at the heart of distributed algorithms is the question of locality: what can be computed using only local information, and how much information is needed? While answering this question is essential for obtaining highly efficient algorithms for many important distributed problems—such as load balancing in massive networks—, locality is a fundamentally important concept also in many other fields of algorithmics, such as classical sequential algorithms, massively parallel algorithms, dynamic algorithms, sublinear algorithms, streaming algorithms, or online algorithms.  In the context of distributed algorithms, a careful analysis of recent research on impossibilities reveals the key challenges in understanding locality—and therefore in designing optimal algorithms—for many graph problems: understanding 1) how to solve tree-like structures efficiently and 2) how to explicitly exploit any deviations from a tree-like topology algorithmically. The goal of this proposal is to gain a fundamental understanding of locality via the novel concept of topology-sensitive algorithms that precisely addresses these key challenges by explicitly exploiting local topological features in the input instance. Such an understanding will result in optimal algorithms and tight complexity bounds for many important distributed problems, thereby resolving central questions in distributed algorithms that have been open for decades, laying the foundations for highly efficient and scalable algorithms in massive networks, and implying significant improvements over the state-of-the-art in a variety of other algorithmic fields. In a nutshell, the proposed project aims at a world in which everything that can be done locally will be done locally.

Mots-clés : distributed graph algorithms,locality,topology sensitive algorithms,optimal algorithms,time complexity,theory of distributed computing
Projet ERC : OBGate (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems E ngineering
Entité participante : Université Raymond-Lulle — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : URL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499136.0 €

Many impairing illnesses raging from metastatic cancers to neurodegenerative diseases affect the brain. Unfortunately, delivery of therapeutics to the brain is highly challenging due to the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Despite decades of research, no safe and efficient strategy to overcome this barrier has reached clinical application. Here we propose a concept that will revolutionize brain transport: creating a new orthogonal receptor to mediate transport across the BBB. Numerous molecules have been developed to achieve brain delivery via receptor-mediated transport. However, delivery is very limited presumably because no receptor combines 3 key features: high transport efficiency, high expression on the BBB, and low expression on peripheral tissues. This results into peripheral tissues acting as a sink and dramatically lowering the therapeutic index of drugs aimed for the brain. The greatest limitation of current efforts is trying to solve both selectivity and efficient transport in a single delivery vehicle. Our unprecedented approach is based on dissecting this problem in two: increasing transport efficiency with the new orthogonal receptor OBGate and addressing selectivity with a highly efficient targeted vehicle to express the receptor only at the BBB. Since this receptor will not bind any endogenous ligand, its properties and intercellular trafficking can be engineered with minimal alteration of brain homeostasis. This will enable to unravel the key determinants of BBB transport and to build an ideal transport system. Selective expression of this receptor in the brain endothelium will be achieved by engineering a gene delivery nanocarrier mimicking the two-stage viral entry into BBB cells. As an example to prove the efficiency of our system we will aim to deliver biotherapeutics for the treatment of brain metastatic breast cancer. Overall, we will open a new gate to the brain that is poised to be paradigm-breaking in the treatment of neurological diseases.

Mots-clés : blood brain barrier,brain delivery,protein engineering,non viral gene delivery systems
Projet ERC : SyncyNucDiff (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Inserm
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1055625.0 €

Due to their cellular anatomy, syncytial cells face many unique challenges that mono-nucleated cells do not. One of them is how syncytial cells organize gene expression among many nuclei in a shared cytoplasm. How such property is linked to their biological functions remains poorly understood. Using the skeletal muscle as a paradigm and single-nucleus transcriptomics, I recently uncovered previously unrecognized diversity and dynamics of myonuclear transcriptional programs. This conceptualized the syncytial muscle cell itself as an analog of multi-cellular tissue where individual nuclei are counterparts of differentiated cell types. My findings raise two important and unanswered questions. 1) How are the diverse nuclear identities specified and maintained? And 2) What are the functional contributions of the diverse nuclear subtypes in health and disease? I will first focus on the nuclei at the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) and myotendinous junction (MTJ), which are responsible for initiation of contraction and dissipation of contractile force, respectively. Despite their well-established functions, the mechanisms that specify or maintain them are sparsely understood. I will investigate how chromatin architecture and transcriptional regulators govern their identities. I will then characterize the upstream signalling pathways from motor neuron or tendon cells that activate the specific transcriptional programs. So far, genetic manipulation of myofibers have targeted entire muscle nuclei. To overcome this limit, I will develop tools that allow genetic manipulation in specific nuclear subtypes. Previous works had identified a new nuclear subtype associated with muscular dystrophy and a transient time window during postnatal development. I will characterize the function of these nuclei using a method that abolishes their transcriptional activities. The approaches to be developed here will pave the way to understanding the pathophysiology of syncytial cells in the future.

Mots-clés : skeletal muscle,differentiation,neuromuscular and myotendinous junction,muscular dystrophy
Projet ERC : TargetSWItch (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Institut Gustave Roussy — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IGR
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499887.75 €

Recent large-scale genomic profiling studies have uncovered mutations in the SWI/SNF (SWItch / Sucrose Non-Fermentable) chromatin remodelling complex subunits in 20% of solid tumours. Most of these tumours resist to current therapies. To address this highly unmet medical need, it is crucial to determine how to harness vulnerabilities induced by SWI/SNF defects. Recent evidence shows that SWI/SNF influences the DNA damage response and is involved in shaping tumour immunogenicity. Though, whether there is a link between these observations, and whether the latter may be therapeutically exploited is unknown. Further, the impact of SWI/SNF defects on tumour heterogeneity, a major determinant of resistance to treatment, remains unaddressed. I therefore propose to identify and understand synthetic lethal vulnerabilities associated with two selected SWI/SNF defects of unmet need (PBRM1 and SMARCB1), and to further study how the latter can be exploited to stimulate the anti-tumour immune response. By using hypothesis-testing and -generating approaches including high-throughput screening on in-house developed isogenic and non-isogenic models, I will identify and decipher novel synthetic lethal vulnerabilities associated with PBRM1 and SMARCB1 defects. Molecular biology, high-content imaging and in vivo experiments will be performed to study the effects of drugs that cause synthetic lethality, both on intra-cellular signalling and on anti-tumour immune response. I will further characterise the impact of SMARCB1 defects on tumour heterogeneity using single cell sequencing on preclinical models and human tumour samples. Preclinical data will be integrated with tumour profiling and clinical data, and will guide the development of proof-of-concept clinical studies, as I previously did. The overall research program will identify, decipher mechanistically and evaluate clinically novel immuno-oncology therapeutic strategies for selected SWI/SNF-deficient tumours of unmet need.

Mots-clés : cancer therapeutics chromatin remodelling resistance to treatment precision medicine
Projet ERC : ReHuse (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ICIQ
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498401.0 €

Stimuli-responsive polymers adapt their properties in response to external cues. Engineering such “smart” behaviour in artificial systems by molecular design is an exciting fundamental challenge that can lead to technological breakthroughs. Most stimuli-responsive polymers rely on heat and light to trigger changes in materials properties in a predictable fashion. However, limitations intrinsic to these stimuli highlight the necessity of alternative strategies. Naturally evolved systems widely exploit mechanical stimulation to regulate their functions, but recreating such concept in artificial materials has proven extremely challenging thus far.  ReHuse proposes a radically new approach that focuses on the application of mechanical force to induce changes in bulk materials properties isothermally and reversibly. The research project aims at pushing the frontiers of covalent mechanochemistry through the development of reversible heterolytic mechanophores –molecular platforms that dynamically generate and recombine two oppositely charged (macro)molecular fragments upon mechanical stimulation. These new motifs will enable dynamic chemistries involving organic ionic species in solid-state systems in two different types of advanced bulk materials. Combining reversible mechanochemistry and dynamic covalent chemistry will lead to dynamic covalent polymers displaying selective mechanoresponsiveness. This concept will be leveraged to create recyclable materials. The reversible generation of charges from the heterolytic scission will enable to modulate hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity dynamically. Such principles will be explored to set the groundwork for mechano-responsive atmospheric water harvesters. This interdisciplinary research project will advance our understanding of mechanochemistry and, more importantly, will usher new avenues for its productive and repeatable use in adaptive materials.

Mots-clés : mechanochemistry,stimuli responsive polymers,circular chemistry