Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ElectroSAFT (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université technique du Danemark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DTU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The objective of this project is to develop and make available in various forms an equation of state for electrolyte solutions, eSAFT-VR Mie, developed during the ERC project "New Paradigm in Electrolyte Thermodynamics". The model can be applied across a wide range of temperatures, pressures, and solvents, solving the problems of currently used models in industry and research. We aim to integrate the model into a user-friendly tool featuring a Guided User Interface (GUI) and a CAPE-OPEN or user model interface for commercial simulators, allowing the non-expert user to apply the model in day-to-day work. The tool and the user model will be available under various licences and conditions (1-academic use licence, 2-non-comercial industrial licence available to industrial consortia managed by the PI, 3- commercial use licence for any entity interested in buying it). This strategy will facilitate wider distribution and testing, thereby promoting the development of a robust tool relevant (but not limited) to industry and academia.

Mots-clés : electrolytes,esaft vr mie
Projet ERC : AIDA (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université technique du Danemark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DTU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Allergy is a severe immune reaction to foreign substances known as allergens, with respiratory and food allergies affecting 30% and 10% of the global population, respectively. A high structural similarity exists between pollen and food allergens. Therefore, many people suffer from both types of allergies. Untreated allergies have detrimental effects on health-related quality of life, family economics, and work attendance. Allergy is treated as a chronic disease, with a focus on reducing symptoms (e.g., antihistamines), which is cumbersome and expensive. The only existing curative treatment, allergen immunotherapy (AIT), consists of up to 5 years of monthly exposure to low amounts of the triggering allergen until the immune system is desensitized. Unfortunately, this approach is costly for healthcare providers and its efficacy varies, being especially low for patients allergic to multiple pollen and foodstuff sources. Only 40% of patients choose to undergo AIT, and 20% of these terminate the treatment early due to strong side effects or lack of efficacy. We propose the development of an urgently needed AIT by treating several allergies at once, achieving tolerance faster, and reducing side effects.
Projet ERC : VALERIE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université d'Anvers — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

In an era marked by escalating concerns over antibiotic and antimycotic resistance as the next major global pandemic, the need to explore unconventional sources of antimicrobial agents has become increasingly urgent. In this context, lactobacilli, traditionally renowned for their probiotic and food applications, have recently emerged as a promising source of novel antimicrobial strategies. These lactic acid bacteria, abundant in various natural habitats including the human vagina and fermented foods, present a unique source for the discovery of novel antimicrobial compounds, because the compounds are valuable as such when purified and when combined with the producing lactobacilli are used as live biotherapeutic products or probiotics. The VALERIE project starts from recent discoveries in the host laboratory that lactobacilli from the vagina can produce specialized antimicrobials, including novel bacteriocin-types. This discovery is particularly appealing since gynaecology and women’s health is an area in medicine which urgently needs new antimicrobials. VALERIE aims to bring these discoveries to a higher Technology Readiness Level (TRL4). Our objectives include purifying and characterizing these compounds and assessing their antimicrobial efficacy against key pathogens, including fungi like Candida albicans and ESKAPE pathogens and elucidate their mode of action. Hereto, we will assess the safety and efficacy of the purified compounds and producing lactobacilli in silico, in vitro and in vivo and initiate the development of multispecies lactobacilli formulation for applications with the live producing micro-organisms. These experiments will result in a robust dataset that can attract industrial partners for future endeavours aimed at clinical applications. Through innovative approaches, we aspire to unveil and harness the untapped antimicrobial potential of lactobacilli, providing a ray of hope in our ongoing battle against antibiotic resistance.

Mots-clés : probiotics,live biotherapeutics,vaginal microbiome,women s health,antibiotics
Projet ERC : LabmyXRD (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université technique du Danemark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DTU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Essentially all materials microstructures are three-dimensional (3D). In spite of this, by far the most widely applied characterization tool is microscopy, which gives 2D images only. There is a need to go to 3D, and daily access to 3D measurements is required. Instruments that can be operated at home laboratories is thus the way forward.  Our solution is to use newly developed and commercially available X-ray optics to focus the X-ray beam down to micrometer size in a laboratory X-ray instrument, and adapt measurement principles inspired by synchrotron X-ray techniques to enable nondestructive 3D imaging with a spatial resolution of 1 μm. The resulting laboratory 3D micro X-ray diffraction (LabμXRD) method will outperform all existing tools for mapping crystallographic orientations and be the first of its kind enabling measurements of strain tensors within local microstructural elements.  The project objectives are: • to prove the concept and demonstrate the innovation potential of our LabμXRD idea (filed as a patent application); • to validate LabμXRD results, quantify resolution specifications as well as the strain measurement potentials and provide guidelines for LabµXRD measurements for different types of samples; • to complete a first business plan for commercialization.  In this project, we will focus on demonstrating the potential of LabμXRD for non-destructive 3D microstructural characterization by the use of metallic materials. It must, however, be noted that LabμXRD can be used for characterization of any crystalline material with grain/subgrain size down to 2 μm. When LabμXRD is manufactured and commercialized at a sales price within reach for leading universities and industries, in the order of 1.5 M €, we foresee that it in time will revolutionize the way materials are characterized – moving away from the present 2D methods to full non-destructive 3D characterizations of the distribution of both crystal orientations and local strains.
Projet ERC : LeukoScreen (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Helmholtz Zentrum München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HMGU
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 135000.0 €

Acute promyelocytic leukemia is an extremely aggressive blood cancer where immediate diagnosis can determine life or death. The diagnostic state of the art is manual inspection of a patient’s blood smear under the microscope by trained cytologists. It is prone to human error and time consuming - a risk factor in notoriously understaffed laboratories. Supporting clinical decisions with AI will drastically increase diagnostic speed and accuracy, benefit patient survival, and free up valuable expert time. This is particularly important for cytological and histological analysis, whose market size is expected to rise by a compounded annual growth rate of 14.7% in coming years. Yet, so far, the proof of concept that AI can be effectively employed for leukemia detection in routine diagnostics is missing.  I will leverage the methodological advancements in deep learning and explainable AI, the skills of my ERC CoG funded research group, and the expertise and data of the Munich Leukemia Laboratory (MLL), the largest leukemia laboratory in Europe and my long standing industry partner. Together, we will develop and implement LeukoScreen, an AI-based software to automatically identify and flag up acute leukemia cases from MLL’s routine laboratory input. This will decrease the diagnosis to treatment time of critical leukemia cases at reduced costs and staffing. Specifically, we will (i) deploy a real-world dataset from the routine input of the MLL, (ii) train and evaluate our algorithm for transparent decision making on routine diagnostic blood smears, (iii) quantify the gain in sensitivity, specificity, and speed by comparing LeukoScreen with the currently used manual workflow at MLL, and (iv) jointly develop a commercialization strategy for the exploitation of results.  This AI approach to support disease detection will save patients’ lives, change the paradigm of cytologic workflows, and create capacities in overburdened diagnostics.
Projet ERC : PREDICT THE DRUG (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Helmholtz Zentrum München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HMGU
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

For decades, oncologists treating cancer patients desire biomarkers that predict drug sensitivity on a patient individual level; unfortunately, the challenge remains unsolved until today. As treating clinicians are unable to identify the patients who benefit most and despite advanced multi-omics diagnostics, the majority of cancer patients are treated according to risk groups. As a result, patients receive inactive drugs without benefit, but adverse effects and European healthcare systems lose significant resources without gain. During my ERC CoG work, we developed a completely new test principle which has the potential to bridge the gap. The group of “targeted” anticancer drugs causes tumor cells to die by inhibiting a single specific signalling molecule; we used the CRISPR/Cas9 mediated gene knockout to mimic the activity of such targeted drugs. In proof-of-principle work, we used patient-derived xenograft (PDX) leukemia models to show that the knockout of a target gene in vitro was able to predict which patient´s PDX model responded to treatment with the respective drug in vivo. Here, we plan to optimize our test system by studying knockout of BCL-2 to predict sensitivity to the BCL-2 targeting drug Venetoclax. The planned work harbours the potential of a major breakthrough to solve a long-standing challenge in anti-cancer treatment, namely to predict which individual patient´s tumor responds to which targeted.
Projet ERC : Celloop-CPGoC (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Université technique du Danemark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DTU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

This project aims to validate the Centrifugal Perfusion Gut-on-Chip (CPGoC) system, offering a low-cost, pump-free, and user-friendly alternative to existing microfluidic systems for drug absorption studies. Unlike traditional models, CPGoC uses centrifugal force to drive continuous perfusion, closely mimicking physiological fluid flow and nutrient transport in the human intestine. Thus, it eliminates the need for external pumps and tubing, reducing costs, contamination risks, and technical barriers. Our system is designed to bridge the gap between outdated static cultures and overpriced, complex microfluidic organ chips. By offering an affordable, easy-to-use, and physiologically relevant alternative, CPGoC will accelerate drug discovery, reduce development costs, and shorten development time. CPGoC has the potential to revolutionize drug testing, providing researchers with a more accessible and predictive model to improve human drug evaluation and regulatory approval processes.

Mots-clés : organ on a chip,centrifugal microfluidic,drug absorption,affordable,easy to use
Projet ERC : RIO (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Microscale chemical gradients are essential in life sciences, materials science, and chemical processes, yet existing measurement methods rely on fluorophores or dyes that inherently alter system properties and provide only indirect insights.  With this PoC, we aim to revolutionize their quantification by further developing and ultimately commercializing RIO - the Refractive Index Observer - an add-on device for optical microscopes that enables label-free, high-resolution characterization of chemical gradients at the microscale. The technology uses Fabry-Pérot interferometry to obtain time-resolved two-dimensional (2D) refractive index (RI) maps at the microscale and convert this information into chemical gradient mapping. With a resolution of at least 2x10-5 RI units, RIO is comparable to a benchtop refractometer for bulk samples but with the spatial resolution of a typical optical microscope and a 10-millisecond time resolution. RIO is born out of the ERC CoG “ACTIVE_ADAPTIVE” as a tool to measure chemical gradients in active matter systems. We have already patented the technology, which is at TRL4. With this PoC we aim at taking RIO to TRL6/7 and lay the groundwork for its commercialization by: 1. Developing the current hardware to (i) push the time resolution to sub-millisecond while maintaining the highest RI resolution and (ii) create a palette of customized interferometric microfluidic chips to cover a broad range of application fields. 2. Advancing the control system and software via a robust, professional and intuitive graphical user interface (GUI). 3. Conducting a techno-economic assessment of the technology alongside a product-market fit evaluation. 4. Carrying out user testing and fundraising for pre-commercialization. If successfully implemented, RIO has the potential to disrupt the way microscopy is performed on liquid samples across a wide range of disciplines, including electrochemistry, microrobotics, cell biology, and materials science.
Projet ERC : CAPTOMER (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Gene therapy and RNA-based therapeutics hold significant promise for treating a range of debilitating disorders. A key challenge for these therapies is the effective targeted delivery, which relies on nanovehicles to ensure the stability of the delicate nucleic acids involved. Biogenic nanoparticles, such as adeno-associated viruses (AAVs), are becoming increasingly promising for these applications, with some AAV-based therapies already receiving regulatory approval. However, maintaining the physicochemical properties essential for the efficacy and safety of these products presents significant challenges, particularly due to their complex manufacturing processes, which often result in a high degree of impurities or perturbations in their structures. Traditional bioseparation methods, such as chromatography, struggle to efficiently isolate these nanoparticles without compromising their quality. To address these issues, this project proposes a novel isolation technique for AAVs using functionalized, programmable liquid-like coacervates formed from zwitterionic polymers. Previous applications on extracellular vesicles demonstrated significant improvements in purity, yield, and processing time compared to conventional methods. The liquid nature of coacervates preserves particle integrity during isolation while their anti-fouling properties enhance specificity in capturing target molecules. This scalable approach integrates the benefits of existing purification methods, offering a gentler, efficient, and simple solution for bioseparation. Building on the success of the Consolidator ERC-funded "VELCROproteins" project, this initiative translates insights obtained from biological condensate research to design coacervates with tunable properties for diverse biotechnological applications, particularly in the healthcare sector. The project aims to establish a new purification processes for crucial nanomaterials, paving the way for advanced therapeutic strategies.
Projet ERC : ReSTLess (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : KU Leuven — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

In my ERC AdG (ResPectMe) I developed a survey module of unpaid labour that was implemented through nation-wide panel surveys in Sweden (Lore), France (ELIPSS), The Netherlands (LISS) & UK (NatCen). With this PoC (ReSTLess) I will harness and maximize the utility of this survey module along three dimensions: time (work hours, incl. time to maintain, prepare, travel for work), material (office spaces, smart phone, software, PCs, other infrastructures), immaterial assets (emotions, feelings, knowledge, skills, competences).  Hence the aim of this PoC is to establish a clear pathway from research (ResPectMe) to policy and innovation (ReSTLess) by instigating a ‘macro-social turn’ on labour market inequality due to unpaid labour. This will be achieved through two major deliverables:  First, the PoC will create a new Open database (OD) encompassing the cross-national harmonised three dimensions of the ResPecTMe survey module. The OD will cater to identified end-users, namely international & EU-based agencies, such as Eurofound & ILO. It will support them in developing policy recommendations by monitoring shifts in labour market inequality, based upon job quality through the OD providing information along the harmonised unpaid labour dimensions across the indicated countries. A policy & technical report will present recommendations for policy makers & policy research institutes, connecting between unpaid dimensions, their socio-demographic, occupational differences at individual level, and macro-level labour market indicators, variables for each studied country (the ‘macro-social turn’).  Second, the PoC will develop a Toolkit of unpaid labour. Based on the OD, the Toolkit will cater to EU-based social organizations end-users, such as ETUI, to train unions, workers representatives on bargaining about working time reduction, and civil society organisation SOLIDAR to empower workers by raising awareness about unpaid labour.
Projet ERC : DisPatch EEG (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : KU Leuven — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Over 400 million people worldwide suffer from disabling hearing loss. While the majority can be helped with a hearing aid, users still experience major difficulties in situations where multiple people talk simultaneously, leading to social isolation. Although algorithms exist to extract a single speaker from such a speech mixture, the current bottleneck is that a hearing aid does not know which of these speakers the user aims to attend.  Recent research has shown that this auditory attention can be decoded from the brain via electroencephalography (EEG). However, a practical realization in hearing aids is hindered by current EEG form factors: headsets are too bulky, while miniaturized sensors lack a wide scalp coverage. Furthermore, conventional EEG requires applying a gel on the skin, which dries out over time.  To address these issues, we propose a novel modular approach using 4 wireless EEG sensor patches strategically positioned on hairless scalp locations. This offers several advantages, such as (1) increased scalp coverage for improved decoding accuracy while maintaining comfort and discreteness due to a far-driven miniaturization and absence of wires; (2) the use of dry adhesive patches with skin-conforming microneedle electrodes for high-quality EEG recording without gel; (3) efficient algorithms that process signals and exchange compressed data wirelessly over short distances with minimal energy usage, thereby maximizing battery life.  In this project we will develop an operational prototype of this system drawing from our recent ERC-originated innovations, and validate it on hearing-impaired subjects.
Projet ERC : VALSOUNDS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : KU Leuven — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The VALSOUNDS project will design a prototype multimedia digital valorisation tool that allows museums and cultural heritage institutions to highlight the sonic aspects of their collections or sites. This will be done through an innovative, immersive (3-D, AR) digital interface with a focus on audio. Existing applications tend to privilege visual communication (images, text), deploying no or inadequate audio components. This ‘sonic gap’ often means missing out on sonic aspects that are crucial for fully appreciating and experiencing the cultural meaning of a given site or object. A significant number of sites has also been irrevocably altered or destroyed, making it impossible by analogue means to produce the sounds required for a historically informed hearing experience. The new field of archaeo-acoustics enables digital reconstructions (‘auralizations’) of lost or altered spaces and sites. Existing case studies concerning the European Middle Ages were carried out primarily on sacred spaces (e.g., Pentcheva & Abel 2017), and only quite recently on court architecture (Sluyts et al. 2021). VALSOUNDS will build on the latter and conduct a case study of Valois palaces (c. 1400). The Valois courts have long been identified as sites of some of the most significant musical developments of their time; but they were also sites of conspicuous architectural innovation, making them a prime object for archaeo-acoustic study. Through a collaboration of acousticians, architectural historians, historical musicologists, heritage sites, performers, and private enterprise, VALSOUNDS reconstructs the Valois courts’ soundscape digitally, and embeds the resulting audio experience in an immersive multimedia environment that will be both sustainable and transferable for similar mediation concepts. This enhanced level of mediation for audio content not only anticipates the marketing needs of heritage sites in the digital age but also lends itself to multiple commercial applications.