Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : LIMA (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Technical University of Denmark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DTU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1951353.75 €

Progress within many contemporary or emergent technologies, including photovoltaics, single-photon light sources, and plasmonics, depends crucially on our ability to control the interactions between light and matter. The complexity of the light-matter interactions has made the development of photonic materials a slow, expensive, and empirical-based science. Of particular importance are the detrimental non-radiative processes mediated by defects and phonons that lead to efficiency losses in photovoltaics, reduce the quantum efficiency of single-photon emitters, and cause Ohmic losses in the metallic components of plasmonic devices. LIMA will develop ground breaking methods for calculating non-radiative relaxation rates in real materials from first principles. These will be used to evaluate key performance parameters such as photo-carrier lifetimes and plasmon propagation lengths and thus facilitate a realistic computational assessment of the application potential of photonic materials. In terms of materials, LIMA will focus on the emergent class of atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials. The possibility of combining different 2D materials into van der Waals heterostructures (vdWHs) provides a unique platform for controlling light-matter interactions with atomic scale precision. Multi-scale methods for predicting quasiparticle band structures of general, incommensurable vdWHs will be developed and used to design novel photonic materials with tailored light dispersion and multi-junction solar cells with high absorption and low thermalization losses. High-throughput computational screening will be used to identify novel color centers in 2D materials with potential to act as single-photon sources with high quantum yield and narrow linewidths, which are urgently needed by leading quantum technologies. The possibilities of controlling the color centers via strain engineering and light management will be explored in close collaboration with experimentalists.

Mots-clés : two dimensional materials,electronic structure calculations,light matter interactions,computational materials design
Projet ERC : NICE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
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 : 115000.0 €

Prompt coronary catheterization and revascularization have dramatically improved the outcome of myocardial infarction, but also have resulted in a growing number of survived patients with permanent damage of the heart, which frequently leads to heart failure. This condition is now common, expensive and lethal. All currently available drugs for heart failure are aimed at improving residual cardiac performance, while none counteracts the loss of cardiomyocytes. We aim at developing an innovative biological drug that induces cardiac regeneration after myocardial infarction by stimulating endogenous cardiomyocyte proliferation. Our past work using high throughput screenings has identified a human microRNA (hsa-miR-199a-3p) that is effective at stimulating cardiomyocyte proliferation. Expression of this microRNA in the heart using an AAV vector leads to cardiac regeneration and improvement of cardiac function after myocardial infarction in both mice and pigs. A single administration of hsa-miR-199a-3p as a synthetic molecule is sufficient to stimulate cardiac repair. This project now aims at formulating this chemically synthetized miRNA into a lipid nanoparticle (LNP199) that is fully biocompatible, protects the miRNA from degradation and promotes its cardiac intracellular delivery. By experiments in large animals, the project will define the optimal route for LNP199 delivery by comparing three different routes of administration to the heart, any of which can be adopted for application according to standard clinical procedures. Delivery of LNP199 in pigs after ischemia reperfusion followed by cardiac MRI monitoring over time will provide information on the efficacy of this treatment in a clinically applicable scenario and highlight possible side effect. Among the advantages of this regenerative approach are one-off administration, relative ease of delivery according to standard interventional procedures, stability once manufactured and likely affordable cost.

Mots-clés : cardiac regeneration,cardiomyocyte proliferation,innovative therapies,microrna,myocardial infarction,nanoparticles
Projet ERC : NeurO-GI (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1526438.0 €

Proper functioning of the digestive system depends largely on the enteric nervous system (the gut’s brain), which on one side is linked to the gut’s microbiota and on the other side is linked to environmental factors, like stress, via gut-brain axis. Communication along this axis is not very well understood, even though it is crucial for the diagnosis and treatment of functional digestive disorders, which are the most common problems in the digestive system imposing a significant burden on public health. One of the limiting factors is the lack of tools enabling investigation of gut’s neuronal network in vivo. The goal of this proposal is to provide an insight into the functioning of microbiota-gut-brain axis in vivo. We will develop a novel optogenetic endomicroscope based on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) capable of mapping the morphology and the functionality of the enteric nervous system and microbiota sampling. We hypothesize that such tool, in addition to direct analysis of the gut status in various digestive conditions, can also be indirectly used to stimulate the brain response via gut-brain axis. To test our hypothesis, we will co-register performance of the proposed method with functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate in animal models 1) the response of the brain to activation of serotonin neurons in the gut and 2) the response of the gut to optogenetically induced depression at the brain level. Any tool improving understanding of interactions between microbiota, gut and brain would be of paramount importance for improving management of many patients with digestive disorders. Moreover, such information has potential to introduce novel diagnosis and treatment paradigm in obesity, and other diseases like Parkinson disease or Alzheimer disease. With the ultimate goal of transferring our finding into humans, we will be focused on finding OCT-specific designs and biomarkers for diagnosing diseases linked to dysfunction of this axis.

Mots-clés : nurogastroenterology,optical coherence tomography,optogenetics,optrode,gut brain axis,microbiota,inflammatory bowel disease,functional digestive disorders,motility,diagnosing and treatment
Projet ERC : CORREL-CT (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : University of Manchester — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2926425.0 €

Proposal summary (half page) The vision is firstly, to develop correlative tomography to radically increase the nature and level of information (morphological, structural and chemical) that can be obtained for a 3D volume of interest (VoI) deep within a material or component by coupling non-destructive (3D+time) X-ray tomography with destructive (3D) electron tomography and, secondly to exploit this new approach to shed light on damage accumulation processes arising under demanding conditions. Successful completion of this project will provide new 3D & 4D insights across many areas and yield key experimental data for multiscale models. Objective 1: To build the capability of correlative tomography - To connect platforms across scales and modalities in order to track a VoI that may be located deep below the surface and to combine multiple techniques within a single platform. - To add new facets to correlative tomography including + 3D chemical imaging + 3D crystal grain mapping + the local stress distribution + mechanical performance mapping at the VoI scale Objective 2: To apply it to gain new insights into damage accumulation Correlative tomography will provide a much richer multi-faceted hierarchical picture of materials behaviour from life science to food science from geology to cultural heritage. This project will focus specifically on identifying the nucleation, propagation and aggregation of damage processes in engineering materials. - We will identify and track the mechanisms that control the progressive degradation of conventional bulk engineering materials operating under demanding conditions. - We will examine the hierarchical strategies nature uses to control failure in natural materials through heterogeneous chemistry, morphology and properties. Alongside this we will examine the behaviour of man-made nano-structured analogues and whether we can exploit some of these strategies.
Projet ERC : NASCENT (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Lund University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1875000.0 €

Proposal summary Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease are devastating and costly morbidities whose prevalences are increasing rapidly around the world. As such, there is an urgent need to develop innovative and effective prevention and treatment strategies. As numerous clinical trials have shown, lifestyle modification is by far the best way to prevent these diseases, with lifestyle being twice as effective as the best drugs, less costly and free from side effects. Yet, human biology is complex, causing some people to respond well and others poorly to the same lifestyle interventions. Thus, a huge, as yet unrealised opportunity exists to optimize the prevention and treatment of cardiometabolic diseases by tailoring lifestyle interventions to the patient’s unique biology. NASCENT is an integrated programme of research through which I will functionally annotate and later translate discoveries of gene-lifestyle interactions made through the interrogation of large epidemiological (N>100,000) datasets at my disposal. The functional annotation of these discoveries will be done using state-of-the-art epigenomic and targeted gene editing tools, whereas the translation of those findings will be achieved using a innovative and powerful clinical trial design that focuses on treatments that are tailored to the participant’s genotype (genotype-based recall). NASCENT capitalizes on a solid foundation of cohorts, methods, and expertise that I have built-up over the past fifteen years, but also exploits state-of-the-art epigenomic and gene-editing technologies that have not previously been used in studies of gene-lifestyle interactions. I expect the integration of these established and new approaches in NASCENT to propel major advances in understanding gene-lifestyle interactions in cardiometabolic disease that help optimise disease prevention.

Mots-clés : personalised medicine,cardiometabolic,lifestyle,type 2 diabetes mellitus,obesity,cardiovascular disease,gene environment interaction,clinical trials,precision medicine,personalized medicine
Projet ERC : METAWARE (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : École normale supérieure PSL — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ENS PSL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1256345.64 €

Proposal summary. Understanding the psychological and neurobiological determinants of consciousness is fundamental. Yet, the main trend focusing on how the front of the brain (prefrontal cortex) interacts with the back (sensory cortex) for accessing perceptual contents limits our understanding of the information coding schemas underlying consciousness. Here, we explore these informational properties in adults and infants from 3 novel perspectives: sleep, self-consciousness and metacognition. First, we will study unconscious processes in the full absence of consciousness, including self-consciousness and metacognition, by focusing on the sleeping brain’s ability to process and learn information from its environment. While most studies on subliminal perception measured unconscious processes intermixed with conscious ones, studying their impact in the sleeping brain will provide new insights on a broader and more natural type of unconscious. Secondly, we will explore the fundamental issue of whether multiple agents can share information and each other’s conscious access mechanisms, without being aware of it. Using a novel approach called the “Reversed Perspective Paradigm”, we will study if access to conscious content can be determined by another agent’s actions and sensory processing while the agent is lured to believe she owns these access mechanisms. We aim at challenging the long-held conviction that consciousness is a paradigm of privacy, by breaking it using virtual reality and objective methods from psychology. Finally, we will attempt to answer the two fundamental issues of whether infants have a capacity for metacognition (do they know they know) and whether they experience self-consciousness (do they feel themselves as a unitary entity). Examining these self-reflection mechanisms, through behavioural and EEG techniques, will address the issue of whether humans in the initial state have a primitive self, or are actually unconscious about their own person.
Projet ERC : METAWARE (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Technical University of Denmark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : DTU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 220000.0 €

Proposal summary. Understanding the psychological and neurobiological determinants of consciousness is fundamental. Yet, the main trend focusing on how the front of the brain (prefrontal cortex) interacts with the back (sensory cortex) for accessing perceptual contents limits our understanding of the information coding schemas underlying consciousness. Here, we explore these informational properties in adults and infants from 3 novel perspectives: sleep, self-consciousness and metacognition. First, we will study unconscious processes in the full absence of consciousness, including self-consciousness and metacognition, by focusing on the sleeping brain’s ability to process and learn information from its environment. While most studies on subliminal perception measured unconscious processes intermixed with conscious ones, studying their impact in the sleeping brain will provide new insights on a broader and more natural type of unconscious. Secondly, we will explore the fundamental issue of whether multiple agents can share information and each other’s conscious access mechanisms, without being aware of it. Using a novel approach called the “Reversed Perspective Paradigm”, we will study if access to conscious content can be determined by another agent’s actions and sensory processing while the agent is lured to believe she owns these access mechanisms. We aim at challenging the long-held conviction that consciousness is a paradigm of privacy, by breaking it using virtual reality and objective methods from psychology. Finally, we will attempt to answer the two fundamental issues of whether infants have a capacity for metacognition (do they know they know) and whether they experience self-consciousness (do they feel themselves as a unitary entity). Examining these self-reflection mechanisms, through behavioural and EEG techniques, will address the issue of whether humans in the initial state have a primitive self, or are actually unconscious about their own person.
Projet ERC : MolDynForSyn (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Proteins are the building blocks of life and neurons constantly need proteins to remain functional. This is a formidable challenge because neurons must regulate dendritic protein numbers across hundreds of micrometers, and need to redistribute proteins quickly in response to any synaptic changes. For example, long-term plasticity requires new proteins. Yet, it is still a puzzle how the available pool of proteins is redistributed via diffusion or active trafficking and how synaptic protein numbers are modified by increased translation of local mRNAs. Similarly, it is now an open question how the dysregulation of mRNA transport translates into plasticity impairments, how these modify circuit functions and ultimately lead to cognitive impairments. To answer these questions and connect the molecular dynamics to circuit function, we will develop a data-driven theory describing the dendritic mRNA and protein distributions in space and time and will use it to study the emergent synaptic plasticity dynamics in dendrites and its impact on memory storage. We will use data from leading experimental labs to identify how the unique combination of dendritic mRNAs, dendritic morphology, and synaptic activity gives rise to the synaptic protein dynamics that shapes circuit function. Our theory framework will generate and test hypotheses about how individual components such as mRNA motion, translation or degradation shape the protein exchange between synapses and clarify how they translate into multi-synapse synaptic plasticity rules that give rise to memory formation, memory generalization and separation. The unique combination of theory and experimental data will improve our understanding of long-term memory mechanisms and numerous neurological diseases that are associated with neuronal trafficking pathologies or protein synthesis dysfunction.

Mots-clés : neural circuits,protein dynamics,synaptic dynamics,neural network models,computational neuroscience
Projet ERC : DiProPhys (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
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 : 1999715.0 €

Proteins are the fundamental building blocks of life, underpinning functional processes in living systems. They are able to exert their biological activities by binding to other proteins to form functional complexes which act as the machinery of life. In certain cases, however, proteins escape cellular quality control mechanisms and form aberrant complexes. The formation of such clusters stabilised by inter-molecular hydrogen bonds, amyloid aggregates, has dramatic consequences for biological systems and they are implicated in neurodegenerative disorders. The fundamental biophysical chemistry governing the formation of protein clusters has been challenging to probe and understand as this process results in a highly heterogeneous distribution of aggregates of different sizes and with different properties, and correspondingly diverse effects on living cells’ function. As such, conventional bulk methods are challenging to apply to uncover a fundamental biophysical understanding of their formation, dynamics and behaviour. The present proposal addresses this fundamental problem by bringing together microfluidics and single molecule spectroscopy to develop a novel digital biophysics platform for studying protein aggregation. Through this route, we will be able to study aggregates one by one, inside and outside cells, and discover the fundamental physical determinants that govern their formation and effects on the cellular systems. This proposal is motivated by the hypothesis that the physico-chemical properties of protein aggregates modulate their biological activity, and by studying protein aggregation at the level of single aggregates and single cells, we will access fundamentally new biophysical chemistry, including how liquid-liquid phase separation can modulate the nucleation barriers in protein aggregation, what the molecular mechanisms are by which amyloid aggregates can self-multiply, and what physical parameters determine their effects on living cells.

Mots-clés : protein aggregation,liquid liquid phase separation,protein biophysics,digital biology
Projet ERC : TryptoBoost (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1947208.0 €

Proteins execute a broad range of functions that are central to life. Understanding these functions ultimately requires experiments at the single protein level to reveal dynamics and heterogeneities hidden in ensemble-averaged measurements. Currently, the preferred method to study single protein machineries is based on fluorescence techniques. However, fluorescence experiments suffer from major challenges: the need for external fluorescent labeling, weak signals and low non-physiological concentrations in the nanomolar range. These challenges severely limit the applicability and biological relevance of single molecule fluorescence on proteins. The TryptoBoost project aims to overcome all the previous challenges, and efficiently monitor single label-free proteins using their intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence enhanced by optical nanoantennas in the ultraviolet. Using the natural amino acid fluorescence rules out all drawbacks due to external labeling, while the optical nanoantennas enable single protein analysis at the physiologically relevant micromolar concentrations thanks to the localization and enhancement of light-matter interactions at the nanoscale. To demonstrate the power of this new technology, our interdisciplinary team will probe the important biological problems of amyloid aggregation and tumor suppressor p53 protein folding dynamics at high concentrations. The TryptoBoost approach is directly applicable to any protein containing aromatic amino acids. This condition is met by more than 90% of human proteins, so the project breakthroughs will benefit a broad range of biophysical, chemical, and medical applications. For instance, it will improve the development of therapeutic drugs, increase the detection sensitivity and read-out speed in analytical biosensing on chip, and provide new nanostructures to enhance ultraviolet photocatalysis.

Mots-clés : protein,fluorescence spectroscopy,single molecule,nanophotonics,optical antenna