Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : CROSS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
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 : 3146598.0 €

CROSS will set the grounds for large-scale experiments searching for neutrinoless double beta decay with zero background at an exposure scale of ~1 tonne x year and with very high energy resolution – about 1.5‰ – in the region of interest. These features will enable searching for lepton number violation with unprecedented sensitivity, penetrating in prospect the direct-ordering region of the neutrino masses. CROSS will be based on arrays of TeO2 and Li2MoO4 bolometers enriched in the isotopes of interest 130Te and 100Mo, respectively. There are strong arguments in favor of these choices, such as the high double beta transition energy of these candidates, the easy crystallization processes of TeO2 and Li2MoO4, and the superior bolometric performance of these compounds in terms of energy resolution and intrinsic purity. The key idea in CROSS is to reject surface events (a dominant background source) by pulse-shape discrimination, obtained by exploiting solid-state-physics phenomena in superconductors. The surfaces of the crystals will be coated by an ultrapure superconductive aluminium film, which will act as a pulse-shape modifier by delaying the pulse development in case of shallow energy depositions, exploiting the long quasi-particle life-time in aluminium. This method will allow getting rid of the light detectors used up to now to discriminate surface alpha particles, simplifying a lot the bolometric structure and achieving the additional advantage to reject also beta surface events, which unfortunately persist as an ultimate background source if only alpha particles are tagged. The intrinsic modularity and the simplicity of the read-out will make CROSS easily expandable. The CROSS program is focused on an intermediate experiment with 90 crystals, installed underground in the Canfranc laboratory, which will be not only extremely competitive in the international context but also a decisive step to demonstrate the enormous potential of CROSS in terms of background.

Mots-clés : double beta decay,neutrino physicis,rare events,low temperature detectors,underground experiments
Projet ERC : CULTIVATE MSS (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : Trinity College Dublin — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : TCD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 45596.9 €

CULTIVATE MSS aims to assess the significance of the trade in medieval manuscripts for the development of ideas about the nature and value of European culture in the early 20th century, a crucial period for the development of modern European nation states. Although recent technological developments have facilitated quantitative analyses of provenance data, charting in increasing detail the early-20th-century movement of manuscripts, including an exodus of works to America, qualitative analyses have failed to keep pace, leaving questions of how and why particular books were valued underexplored. The PI’s role in the development of the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts, which has begun to make available historic data about books, has revealed the need for a reassessment of the relationship between collecting and scholarship, and the potential for existing data about the manuscript trade to be used, with unpublished archival sources, to identify and compare the economic and philosophical values projected onto books. Thus the project uses the PI’s expertise to develop a multi-disciplinary approach to assess the roles of collectors, scholars and dealers in the formation of collections of medieval manuscripts, and the impact of this on scholarship, comparing the English-speaking world, France and Germany. It will analyse published and unpublished accounts of manuscripts, together with price data, to reconstruct values projected onto books. It will seek to contextualise these values within the history of the early 20th century, assessing the impact of two world wars and other political and economic shifts on the trade in books and attitudes to manuscripts as objects of national significance. The Middle Ages are often identified with the emergence of European cultural identities, thus a reappraisal of the historiography of the study of medieval manuscripts has the potential to impact research about attitudes to European culture and identity in a wide range of disciplines.

Mots-clés : medieval manuscripts,provenance history,historiography,collecting,twentieth century book trade
Projet ERC : WRITE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : University of Bologna — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIBO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1113750.0 €

Calligraphy is a central tenet of Chinese civilization. The whole history of China is strictly linked to the history of its writing and calligraphy. In contemporary times Calligraphy has undergone a radical change and it has evolved into new forms in all fields of visual and performing arts. WRITE will explore how all these forms emerged in: (F1) “fine and contemporary arts” where it became a naïf painting made of pictographic shapes of characters, an abstract combination of dots and lines, a “light-calli-photograph,” an artistic video based on digital strokes; (F2) decorative and applied arts, where the characters lost their connection with the linguistic meaning to become decorative elements used for commercial scopes or to design architectures; (F3) performing arts, where the rhythm, dynamism and harmonic movement of calligraphy became a choreographic gesture of a contemporary ballet or an improvised jazz song; (F4) graffiti art, where the presence of calligraphy along the streets evolved from Maoist propaganda posters into graffiti pieces made of wild-style characters or cursive tags. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, WRITE will analyze how these new forms have been transforming not only the creative practice of contemporary artists but also the language about calligraphy and art (F5/F6), reflecting new socio-political (F7) and economic (F8) orders. WRITE will examine the innovative ways in which these new forms of calligraphy have responded to, subverted or reinterpreted traditional idioms to define a modern artistic identity that exists comfortably within the global art world while remaining indelibly Chinese. By looking at contemporary calligraphy, WRITE will reveal how these new forms powerfully resonate with China’s rich and enduring cultural tradition and at the same time mirror the sweeping social and economic changes that have taken place in China during the last four decades.

Mots-clés : calligraphy,contemporary china,contemporary art
Projet ERC : NLPRO (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Bar-Ilan University — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : BIU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1089199.3 €

Can we program computers in our native tongue? This idea, termed natural language programming, has attracted attention almost since the inception of computers themselves. From the point of view of software engineering (SE), efforts to program in natural language (NL) have relied thus far on controlled natural languages (CNL) -- small unambiguous fragments of English with strict grammars and limited expressivity. Is it possible to replace CNLs with truly natural, human language? From the point of view of natural language processing (NLP), current technology successfully extracts static information from NL texts. However, human-like NL understanding goes far beyond such extraction -- it requires dynamic interpretation processes which affect, and are affected by, the environment, update states and lead to action. So, is it possible to endow computers with this kind of dynamic NL understanding? These two questions are fundamental to SE and NLP, respectively, and addressing each requires a huge leap forward in the respective field. In this proposal I argue that the solutions to these seemingly separate challenges are actually closely intertwined, and that one community's challenge is the other community's stepping stone for a huge leap, and vice versa. Specifically, I propose to view executable programs in SE as semantic structures in NLP, and use them as the basis for broad-coverage dynamic semantic parsing. My ambitious, cross-disciplinary goal is to develop a new NL compiler based on this novel approach to NL semantics. The NL compiler will accept an NL description as input and return an executable system as output. Moreover, it will continuously improve its NL understanding capacity via online learning that will feed on verification, simulation, synthesis or user feedback. Such dynamic, ever-improving, NL compilers will have vast applications in AI, SE, robotics and cognitive computing and will fundamentally change the way humans and computers interact.

Mots-clés : natural language processing,semantic parsing,software engineering,machine learning,structure prediction
Projet ERC : ONCOFUM (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : University of Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Cambridge
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 658883.38 €

Cancer cells undergo profound metabolic changes. However, little is known about whether and how metabolic changes drive cancer. The discovery that mutations of Tricarboxylic Acid (TCA) cycle enzymes in mitochondria predispose to cancer gives evidence that dysregulated metabolism could drive tumorigenesis. Amongst these, mutations in Fumarate Hydratase (FH) cause Hereditary Leiomyomatosis and Renal Cell Cancer (HLRCC), characterised by tumours of the skin and uterus, and renal cancer. Patients inherit one mutated copy of FH and loss of the wild-type (wt) allele occurs in tumours. Fumarate accumulation is the defining biochemical feature of these tumours. However, the mechanisms by which FH loss and fumarate accumulation lead to these tumours is unclear. In ONCOFUM, I want to elucidate the mechanisms that underpin tissue-specific tumorigenesis in HLRCC. I hypothesise that HLRCC occurs via a two-step process. Initially, loss of the wt allele in carriers of a FH mutation leads to FH deficiency. However, most of these cells die and only cells in tissues with the appropriate metabolic hardware survive. In the second step, FH loss in permissive tissues leads to phenotypic changes that lead to cancer. To assess this hypothesis, we will generate a mouse model where we inactivate FH in multiple tissues and elucidate the ensuing tissue-specific reprogramming. Then, using cellular models, we will investigate the molecular consequences of FH loss. In parallel, we will perform a comprehensive analysis of HLRCC tumours to find diagnostic and prognostic tools, and new anticancer targets, which will be validated in vitro and in vivo. The experimental framework developed in ONCOFUM will give unparalleled molecular insights into how cancer develops in different tissues in response to loss of FH and will lead to new therapeutic strategies for HLRCC, and, more generally for the many other cancers to which metabolic reprogramming contributes.

Mots-clés : mitochondria,fumarate,cancer,epigenetics,oncometabolites
Projet ERC : TroyCAN (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Karolinska Institutet — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : KI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1483389.0 €

Cancer develops from mutations in stem and progenitor cells. Patients suffering from esophageal squamous cell carcinoma are commonly treated by a combination of chemotherapy and esophagectomy, a debilitating surgical procedure. My group have identified heterogeneity within the esophageal progenitor population in homeostasis which is likely to have implications for the development of squamous cell carcinomas of the esophagus, lead to targeted therapeutic strategies and hopefully reduce the need for surgical intervention. Stem and progenitor cells reside in a complex microenvironment, or niche, that is instructive in determining cell fate during homeostasis and tumor initiation. In the morphologically uniform esophageal epithelium, the presence of progenitor subpopulations cells as well as local microenvironmental niches is not evident. My group aim to not only delineate the functional heterogeneity within the esophageal progenitor population during homeostasis and cancer development, but also map out and eventually target the stromal niche cells driving this phenotypic epithelial heterogeneity. Furthermore, we will use a clinically relevant platform to screen for druggable targets with the ability to eliminate esophageal tumor initiating cells. The incidence of human esophageal squamous cell carcinomas is dramatically increasing, and delineation of the esophageal stem cell niche is a vital first step towards identifying new combined therapeutic strategies directed at eliminating this cancer.

Mots-clés : stem cell heterogeneity,origin of cancer,mouse model,human organic screening,epithelial to mesenchymal crosstalk
Projet ERC : CancerEpiTopology (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Hebrew University of Jerusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Cancer genomics has revolutionized cancer research by systematic mapping of oncogenic genetic alterations of genes, yet oncogenic epigenetic alterations of regulatory elements away from genes remain elusive. I recently demonstrated that aberrant DNA methylation of CTCF binding sites perturbs chromosomal topology in IDH-mutant glioma and SDH-deficient gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs). Loss of CTCF binding at the boundary between two topologically associating domains disrupts their insulation, leading to oncogene activation. This groundbreaking model links metabolic, epigenetic and topological alterations and demonstrates that they can drive oncogenesis. Aberrant DNA methylation is common in many tumors and therefore epigenetic CTCF disruption may play a role in other cancers, but this has not been studied to date. Prompted by my findings, recent advances in genome-wide characterization methods and newly available large-scale data, I now propose to systematically uncover the rules of regulation of DNA methylation at CTCF binding sites, and how its disruption in cancer leads to epigenetic heterogeneity and drives oncogenesis. To achieve that, we will develop new statistical models to systematically uncover the rules of regulation of DNA methylation at CTCF binding sites and its impact on topology (Aim 1); uncover mechanisms of epigenetic topological alterations and their role in cancer (Aim 2); and develop computational tools to study intratumor epigenetic heterogeneity to investigate the interplay between different subclones (Aim 3). Taken together, this research program will facilitate a systematic understanding of epigenetic topological alterations and their role in cancer. These are critical goals for the field in order to understand the events that drive cancer, to discover new biomarkers, dependencies and therapeutic strategies, and to inform epigenetic and other personalized therapies.

Mots-clés : cancer,epigenetics,chromosomal topology,cancer heterogenity,systems biology
Projet ERC : BioProbe-PIT (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : IBM Research - Zurich — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Cancer heterogeneity has reinforced the need for personalized treatment modalities. Pre-therapeutic diagnostic testing of heterogeneous tumors helps avoid inefficacious treatments, optimizes targeted therapy, and improves quality of life. Within targeted therapy, immunotherapy has led to significant improvements in treatment outcomes and is swiftly being integrated in diagnostic workflows. In this context, routine diagnostic tests currently do not exist, and treatments are further challenged by heterogeneity. Spatially resolved molecular probing of tumors prior to treatment would allow prediction of patient response to immunotherapeutics. We have been developing methods to perform local biochemical reactions at micrometer length scales using nanoliter volumes of biochemicals. These methods are implemented using a scanning probe technology – the microfluidic probe (MFP) – with devices, platforms and assays adapted for application on biological substrates. With this, we are working towards multi-modal molecular profiling of tumors – tissue microprocessing (TMP). Thus far, we have demonstrated TMP for local DNA and mRNA analysis on live cells, for patterning cells and for micro-immunohistochemical tests on tissues. Here, we will leverage TMP concepts to work on the initial steps in pre-commercializing the MFP for diagnostic testing in immunotherapy. Specifically, we aim to (1) develop assays for morphological and molecular analyses of pancreatic tissues using the MFP (2) adapt the assays developed in (1) to be compatible with workflows of state-of-the-art genome and transcriptome analysis for molecular profiling of tumors in diagnostics (3) validate these techniques for patient samples. With this PoC grant, we envision to translate the MFP technology from the lab to the clinic for personalized immunotherapy.

Mots-clés : molecular diagnostics,personalized medicine,pathology,genetic analysis,microfluidics,microtechnology,microfluidic probe
Projet ERC : EMbRACe (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 €

Cancer is a global epidemic that affects all ages and socio-economic groups. In turn, tremendous resources are being invested in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. For instance, over 1,000 anticancer drugs are currently in various phases of development and pre-approval testing, more than the number for heart disease, stroke, and mental illness combined. Finding multi-drug combinations for cancer is an increasingly pressing therapeutic challenge. However, screening all possible drug combinations is an impossible task because the number of experiments grows exponentially with the number of different drugs and doses. Therefore, highly effective combinations of already approved drugs may likely exist that have never been tested before at the appropriate doses, due the astronomical number of wet lab tests required to find these combinations. Motivated by this challenge, we have developed a novel method for computing the effects of high order combinations of drugs on cancer cells and predicting the best drug for a given tumor based only on a very small number of experiments. In turn, the goals of our PoC project are to further validate the potential of our formula by means of numerous rigorous tests and to establish the business potential of our idea. If successful, this PoC project will pave the way to the development and adoption of highly personalized drug cocktails that are designed based only on a limited number of measurements performed on patient-derived tumor material.

Mots-clés : cancer,anti cancer drugs,combination therapy,personalized drug cocktails
Projet ERC : NanoMOFdeli (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
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 : 1903685.0 €

Cancer is a major health problem worldwide, being the most common cause of death after cardiovascular diseases. The major goal of new anticancer therapies is to specifically kill tumour cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed. A main challenge to achieve this aim is the development of better drugs, including novel treatments based on the use of siRNAs. These macromolecules are potentially the most powerful anti-cancer drugs that exist, but still there is no efficient way of getting them delivered specifically to the tumour. Indeed, lifetime of such molecules is generally too short and therefore need to be protected in a carrier until they are delivered into tumour target cells. This project focuses in the development of nanocarriers based on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), one of the most exciting developments in recent porous materials science. The study of the mechanisms that control drug delivery is of critical importance to nanomedicine applications, where nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionise cancer therapy. Given the challenging nature of the drug delivery problem for cancer therapy, this project builds on 4 interrelated main concepts: i) the design of bio-compatible MOFs for drug delivery applications; ii) the post-synthesis engineering of MOFs to enhance stability, controlled drug release, and targeting; iii) the identification of optimal textural properties (i.e. pore size distribution, surface area, pore volume) and surface chemistry of MOFs for siRNA delivery using experiments and molecular simulation techniques; iv) the assessment of their performance in vitro and in vivo, giving a translational dimension to the proposed research. The novelty of this work lies therefore in the synergistic combination of tools from different areas and disciplines (chemistry, biochemical engineering and medicine) to produce advances that are of both fundamental scientific interest and of bioengineering relevance in nanomedicine applications.

Mots-clés : metal organic frameworks,adsorption technologies,drug delivery,molecular simulation