Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : DINAMIC (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Uppsala University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Oral administration of drugs is the method of choice for patients and healthcare providers alike because it is both convenient and inexpensive. About 70-90% of the drug candidates have low solubility in the water-based environment of the gut, and therefore a number of strategies have been developed to increase drug solubility, one of these being Lipid-Based Formulations (LBFs). Currently, less than 4% of commercial drug products are LBFs due, in large part, to the difficulty of characterisation of in vivo performance, resulting in slower and more costly drug development and fewer oral drug formulations on the market. Clearly, there is a pressing need for a rapid, inexpensive, accurate, and integrated method to screen and evaluate the performance of LBFs in a physiologically relevant environment. We have developed a novel in vitro assay that can rapidly and accurately evaluate in vivo drug exposure. Dr. Bergström was previously awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2014 to investigate the dynamics of drug, dosage form, and the complex environment of the gastrointestinal tract; DINAMIC is a direct result of this work. Whereas the current state-of-the-art methods involve analysis of LBF digestion and permeation in separate assays, DINAMIC is an integrated digestion-permeation setup that provides a more physiologically relevant, and thereby more accurate, description of LBF performance and drug bioavailability in less than an hour. The technical and commercial feasibility of DINAMIC will be assessed in this ERC PoC project, including development of a prototype that meets the needs of the target customers, as well as the commercial proof-of-concept.

Mots-clés : digestion,permeation,absorption,drug formulation assessment,biopharmaceutical profiling,in vitro in vivo
Projet ERC : SOLED (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Weizmann Institute of Science — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) is an attractive solution for displays and lighting due to its low cost of production. The adoption of OLED technology in televisions, smartphones, and increasing number of applications in wearables, transportation and lighting are contributing to the growth of this market. OLED technology offers sharper images, better contrast and crisp colours than any existing display technology. In lighting applications the efficiency of serial production OLEDs cannot currently reach the efficiency of fluorescent lamps and Light-Emitting Diodes (LED). Also, OLEDs are only marginally more energy efficient than the best LCD displays. In the spin-LED/OLED concept, the electrons injected into and from the light-emitting species have their spin predetermined; therefore, the formation of “dark”, non-emitting triplet states is avoided. Based on our research on the chiral induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect, we propose to develop chiral organic semiconductor structures that provide a universal means to control the spin state of injected electrons and holes in OLEDs. This effect can increase the energy efficiency of the devices by a factor of four. In this proof-of-concept project we will develop, manufacture and test state-of-the-art chiral molecules based spin-LED/OLED structures, which are expected to improve the energy efficiency of LEDs and OLEDs, a critical issue in view of the desire to reduce the energy consumption of electronic devices. The efficiency is expected to improve by a factor of four. The project also takes pre-commercialisation measures and carries out networking actions for preparing optimally to the commercialisation of the spin-OLED technology developed in the project.

Mots-clés : light emitting diode,oled,spin,chirallity
Projet ERC : FAST TestOM (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : CIC nanoGUNE — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Organic electronic devices are currently ubiquitous. For example, most mobile phones in the market have screens based on organic light-emitting diodes. These devices have many advantages against their inorganic counterparts, as they have for example lower manufacturing costs, they are typically very light and robust and can built into flexible devices, bendable and foldable. Organic chemists are constantly producing new organic materials which could outperform the ones used commercially and hence, provide yet another breakthrough for organic optoelectronics. However, every new organic material has to be preliminary tested using very expensive techniques and in experimental conditions which are quite different from those encountered by the device in real operation. This initial testing is both time and budget consuming, and moreover in many occasions does not provide reliable information that can be used efficiently down the production chain. The novel device designed and developed in the framework of the ERC-StG SPINTROS is capable of testing organic materials for their electric performance in real operative conditions, saving time and costs in product development and quality control of optoelectronic devices, while guaranteeing the applicability of the information provided. At this stage, we have a prototype working in laboratory conditions, which corresponds to a Technology Readiness Level 4 (TRL4). Thus, the aim of the present PoC project is to develop the final device to perform first tests in real conditions, taking the technology to TRL 6 to 7 and showing its potential to investors and companies. In addition, based on a preliminary market and commercial analysis, it has been envisioned a high commercial potential for this device. In order to validate and accelerate the commercialization process of it, the present PoC project will also focus on conducting an in deep market feasibility study and a detailed commercialisation strategy plan.

Mots-clés : organic electronics,materials characterization,electronics,oled,prototype
Projet ERC : VIBCONTROL (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Imperial College London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1490967.21 €

Organic electronics (OE) is an expanding research field that exploits the electronic functionalities of organic molecules to make them robust and cost-efficient building blocks for future electronic devices. Due to the ‘soft’ character of organic materials, their electronic properties are defined by vibronic coupling (VC) phenomena which are a result of the interaction between electron and nuclear dynamics of the molecule. This research program aims to unlock a new direction of experimental studies investigating and exploiting VC in OE devices by using optical control of nuclear motion. The growing awareness that VC underlies diverse phenomena from physics to biology stimulates a broad interdisciplinary effort to address this issue. However, in the field of OE, the lack of synergy between device and optical studies holds the potential functionality offered by VC effects from being attained. In 2012, I proposed a direct route to control the performance of OE devices by optically switching the vibronic states of the molecules. Though this work came specifically in connection with organic photovoltaics, it provides the starting point for a more fundamental and broad reaching of VC phenomena. The proposed research program will use this opportunity. I will apply state-of-the-art developments in infrared light shaping to create a well-defined coherent superposition of molecular vibrational motions inside devices and study their influence on electron dynamics with device-specific spectroscopic techniques. This approach combines recent advances in ultrafast spectroscopy and OE to extend our fundamental understanding of molecular charge transport. Our methodology will become a tool for elucidating current pathways in organic nanodevices and offer access to non-equilibrium phenomena down to the level of molecular junctions. This research will lead to the development of new design rules for OE materials serving future advances in molecular electronics, computing and sensing.

Mots-clés : ultrafast spectroscopy,molecular junctions,bio electronics,ir spectoscopy,organic photovoltaics,charge transport,vibronic coupling
Projet ERC : BILUM (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : TU Dresden — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1462500.0 €

Organic semiconducting molecules often make for very good luminescent materials. Fundamental excitations are localized on single molecules, which is in stark contrast to inorganic semiconductors, such that exchange interactions lead to energetically distinct singlet and triplet states. The singlet-excited state is the origin of conventional fluorescence. However, once an excitation is in the molecular triplet state, emission of photons is very unlikely, because spin conservation needs to be broken. Here, non-radiative recombination outcompetes the radiative. Recent research efforts led to the discovery of highly efficient biluminescence. Here, in addition to the fluorescence from the singlet state, the phosphorescence (triplet state emission) is unlocked by suppression of non-radiative channels at room temperature. The dynamics of both states is vastly different with nanosecond fluorescence and millisecond phosphorescence. If both channels are highly luminescent, then there is no room for loss channels. Within BILUM, the virtually unexplored phenomenon of biluminescence will be the central point: On the basic science side, efforts will be focussed on the detailed understanding of structure-property relationships that are key for efficient dual state emission. At the same time, with a curiosity driven engineering approach, known bilumophores will be carefully tested in different scenarios to set the ground for future applications. Biluminescence has the potential to access non-radiative triplet states that are in many cases system limiting, to serve as ultra-broadband emitters, to introduce persistent (ultra long-lived) emission, to store photonic energy, and to allow optical sensing with internal reference emission – all on the molecular level. New bilumophores will be identified through systematic screening that will employ quantum chemical calculations and developed through organic synthesis.

Mots-clés : phosphorescence,fluorescence,biluminescence,sensing,organic molecules,luminescence,down conversion,excitonics,organic synthesis,organic electronics,solid state lighting
Projet ERC : EVO-MEIO (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : UK Research and Innovation — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UKRI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1221592.75 €

Organisms rely on conserved cellular “house-keeping” processes for survival and fertility, but many of these can be upset by common environmental or cellular stresses. What happens if such a challenge becomes more than transient? Meiosis is a well-suited model for understanding how a constrained multiprotein process can evolve; it is biochemically well characterized, critical for fertility in sexual eukaryotes, and its core structures and functions are conserved across kingdoms. Yet proteins that orchestrate meiosis often have high primary sequence divergence among taxa and in some cases have undergone selective sweeps. We hypothesize this pattern reflects a need to repeatedly retune meiotic structures to new conditions over evolutionary time. Environment and genome architecture can both affect meiosis, but a common and particularly potent challenge is whole genome duplication (WGD), which has occurred in most major eukaryotic lineages. But WGD doubles the number of copies of each homolog present, and this can lead to formation of multivalent chromosome associations in meiosis, which can cause meiotic instability and low fertility. Nevertheless, many fertile and meiotically stable polyploids exist, showing that evolution can overcome this challenge. Here we will study how meiotic stability evolved in autopolyploid Arabidopsis arenosa. We previously showed selection acted on eight structural meiosis proteins and hypothesize these co-evolved as an “adaptive module” to prevent multivalent formation by reducing genome-wide crossover rates. This multidisciplinary research programme melds cytological, molecular, genetic, and genomic approaches to discover how meiosis functionally evolved before and after WGD. This work will provide novel insights into how a functionally constrained multiprotein process can evolve in response to challenges, and by providing understanding of crossover rate evolution and polyploid stabilization, is also relevant to rational crop improvement.

Mots-clés : polyploidy,adaptation,meiosis
Projet ERC : MOFcat (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Uppsala University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1968750.0 €

Organometallic redox-catalysts of energy relevance, i.e. water and hydrogen oxidation, and proton and carbon dioxide reduction catalysts, will be incorporated into metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Immobilization and spatial organization of the molecular catalysts will stabilize their molecular integrity and ensure longevity and recyclability of the resulting MOFcats. The organized environment provided by the MOF will enable the control of conformational flexibility, diffusion, charge transport, and higher coordination sphere effects that play crucial roles in enzymes, but cannot be addressed in homogenous solution and are thus largely unexplored. The effect that the MOF environment has on catalysis will be directly probed electrochemically in MOFcats that are immobilized or grown on electrode surfaces. In combination with spectroscopic techniques in spectroelectrochemical cells, intermediates in the catalytic cycles will be detected and characterized. Kinetic information of the individual steps in the catalytic cycles will be obtained in MOFs that contain both a molecular photosensitizer (PS) and a molecular catalyst (PS-MOFcats). The envisaged systems will allow light-induced electron transfer processes to generate reduced or oxidized catalyst states the reactivity of which will be studied with high time resolution by transient UV/Vis and IR spectroscopy. The acquired fundamental mechanistic knowledge is far beyond the current state-of-the-art in MOF chemistry and catalysis, and will be used to prepare MOFcat-based electrodes that function at highest possible rates and lowest overpotentials. PS-MOFcats will be grown on flat semiconductor surfaces, and explored as a novel concept to photoanode and -cathode designs for dye-sensitized solar fuel devices (DSSFDs). The design is particularly appealing as it accommodates high PS concentrations for efficient light-harvesting, while providing potent catalysts close to the solvent interface.
Projet ERC : BioREAD (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Twente — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Organs-on-chip are expected to play a crucial role in the pharmaceutical industry for drug development and study of organs and diseases. We propose the development of an electrical detector that enables simple, versatile and continuous quality monitoring of these devices and is essential for commercialization. Combined with recent advances in stem cell technology, Organ-on-Chips can be used to do drug screening on an individual level. Therefore it can serve as instrument for personalized medicine, by determining the effectiveness of selected compounds, as well as possible side-effects to determine safe drug doses on a person-specific level. Moreover, Organs-on-Chip will greatly contribute to a further reduction in the need for animal testing. Besides the pharmaceutical industry, Organs-on-Chip hold great promise for the food and cosmetics industry to test the safety of products. Organ-on-Chip systems need continuous monitoring of the quality of the cell barrier to guarantee reliable outcomes of the drug development tests. State-of-the-art methods, such as fluorescence and commercially available Trans-Endothelial Electrical Resistance (TEER) measurement apparatus are discontinuous, inaccurate and/or harmful for the cells and therefore unsuitable for pharmaceutical applications. Our innovation overcomes these disadvantages. It enables continuous quality monitoring of the barrier function of the organ, which is essential for the commercialization of Organs-on-Chip. The BIOS-Lab on Chip group holds an excellent record in high-quality TEER measurements, demonstrating direct current (DC) TEER-measurements in a gut-on-a-chip in a top-15 of most cited research papers in the journal Lab-on-Chip in 2015 and has ample experience in the development of a blood-brain barrier on chip. This proposal is part of the ERC-project Vascular Engineering on-chip using differentiated Stem Cells (VESCEL).

Mots-clés : organ on chip,trans endothelial electrical resistance,personalized medicine,impedance spectroscopy,pharmaceutical industry,drug development
Projet ERC : ANCHOR (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Trinity College Dublin — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TCD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 124945.0 €

Osteoarthritis (OA), the most common form of arthritis, is a serious disease of the joints affecting nearly 10% of the population worldwide. The onset of OA has been associated with defects to articular cartilage that lines the bones of synovial joints. Current strategies to treat articular cartilage defects are ineffective and/or prohibitively expensive. The aim of ANCHOR is to develop and commercialise a new medicinal product for articular cartilage regeneration that recruits endogenous bone marrow derived stem cells into an extracellular matrix derived scaffold anchored to the subchondral bone by 3D printed polymeric supports. By recruiting endogenous cells into a supporting scaffold, ANCHOR will obviate the need for pre-seeding scaffolds with cells prior to implantation into cartilage defects, thereby dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of the repair procedure. It will also overcome the need for suturing of a scaffold into a cartilage defect, which is a very time consuming and technically challenging surgical procedure. Finally, the inherent chondro-inductivity of the cartilage ECM derived scaffolds developed by the applicant will maximise the potential for hyaline cartilage regeneration. The project will leverage the applicants extensive experience in ECM derived biomaterials and 3D printing to develop a new product with significant commercial potential. The impact of ANCHOR will be multi-faceted: it will transform how damaged joints are treated by orthopaedic surgeons, it will create economic value through the commercialization of IP, and most importantly it will improve patient experience and their long-term health and well-being.

Mots-clés : tissue engineering,articular cartilage,scaffold,extracellular matrix,3d printing
Projet ERC : LEGENDARE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Erasmus MC — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499995.0 €

Osteoporosis is a silent, systemic skeletal disease leading to fragility fracture. While the deleterious consequences for the individual, their families and society are well established, the causes of the disease remain elusive. Despite exhaustive clinical, epidemiological and genomic research, scarce understanding of the complex underlying disease mechanisms leading to bone fragility has hindered the improvement of clinical care. This LEGENDARE programme aims to implement a holistic integrative approach directed at discerning the underlying mechanistic pathways leading to bone fragility. The approach seeks translating genomic and imaging discoveries into meaningful clinical strategies to stratify risk; re-evaluate treatment indication; and ultimately, redefine (molecular) disease classification of patients with osteoporosis and other skeletal diseases. LEGENDARE will progress beyond the state-of-the-art by integrating genomic information from thousands of loci (genome regions) associated with musculoskeletal traits and other diseases, into “optimized” polygenic risk scores providing novel biological insight about skeletal disease. Skeletal research will be brought to a new level by enriching skeletal imaging with BIG DATA obtained with advanced whole-body EOS 3D X-rays. Approaching the whole skeleton as a unified organ will allow the unprecedented study of hidden relationships across bone compartments. Further, using artificial intelligence approaches, the complexity of the skeletal system will be modelled, integrating genomic, imaging and clinical data across epidemiological cohorts and patient settings. LEGENDARE will deliver knowledge on fundamental processes regulating skeletal fragility, unveiling new strategies for translational exploitation leading to improved clinical outcomes of osteoporosis patients. Discoveries will hold wider significance through potential spinoffs able to mitigate the societal impact of other diseases surging with bone fragility.