Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : TransFORM (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université Johns-Hopkins — Pays : Etats-Unis — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : JHU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2171085.0 €

Translation – the fundamental process of protein synthesis catalyzed by ribosomes - has been extensively characterized from a biochemical, structural, and mechanistic perspective. However, how exactly the translation machinery operates as an interconnected system of millions of ribosomes in cells is poorly understood. Within the cell, ribosomes associate with a multitude of regulatory proteins forming a variety of specialized complexes and distributing across cellular space in a manner that depends on cell state. What is the specific composition of those complexes, their significance, and their functional role? How are they defined and regulated by subcellular compartmentalization? How do they change in response to cellular stress? Our TransFORM synergy team brings together experts in method development for in-cell structural biology and the biology of translation to allow us for the first time to attack these fundamental problems. Building on our prior achievements, we aim to synergistically develop novel methods of cryo-electron tomography with imaging across scales in conjunction with crosslinking mass spectrometry and integrative structural modeling for near-atomic structure determination directly in cells. TransFORM will determine the ribosome structural and functional states across the translation cycle in human cells, following distinct 40S, 80S, and disomal particles (80S+80S), in and out of polysomes and across different protein synthesis regimes. We will uncover structural and compositional changes and regulatory mechanisms across cellular space, in adaptation to perturbations by stressors and during viral infection. Our model systems will span from single cells to organoids. TransFORM will provide a detailed and comprehensive in-cell map of the essential process of protein synthesis while delivering innovative methods for the next-generation of in-cell structural biology.

Mots-clés : in cell structural biology,translation,human cell models,ribosomes,heterogeneity,structural biology,cell biology,cryogenic electron tomography,crosslinking mass spectrometry,structural modeling,integrative modeling
Projet ERC : TREATLIVMETS (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Fondation Gustave Roussy — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Autres
Financement ERC de l'entité : 531000.0 €

Liver metastases commonly develop in up to 50% of patients with various cancer types. The most common cancer that metastasizes to the liver is colorectal cancer (CRC). At least 25% of CRC patients develop colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) during their illness. CRLM represent the major unmet clinical need for this malignancy, as the 5-year survival rate of patients with unresectable disease does not exceed 2%. New therapies that promote antitumor immunity have been recently developed, mostly focusing on enhancing T cell responses. Although these therapies have led to unprecedented successes, only a minority of patients benefit from these treatments, highlighting the need to identify new cells and molecules that could be exploited in next generation immunotherapies. Given the crucial role of innate immune responses in immunity, targeting these responses opens up new possibilities for tumour control. We hypothesize that the immunotherapy of liver metastases can be significantly improved through harnessing the biology of innate lymphoid cells (ILC), such as Natural Killer (NK) cells and ILC1s, and myeloid cells such as macrophages and DCs. Our team brings together experts in the biology of tissue-resident myeloid (Ginhoux, PI4) and lymphoid (Gasteiger, cPI) cells, in liver immunology (Fumagalli, PI3), and in the development of novel immunotherapeutic strategies that modulate immune cells in the fight against cancer (Vivier, PI2). By combining cutting-edge single cell and spatial transcriptomics of human patient samples with cross-species analyses in advanced genetic mouse models, we aim (1) to identify cellular interactions defining the metastatic tumor microenvironment across murine and human tissue-specimens, (2) to investigate immune cell functions regulating metastatic disease using a unique combination of advanced genetic mouse and human tissue models, and (3) to harness the anti-tumoral functions of innate immune cells via next generation cell engagers.

Mots-clés : liver immunology,liver metastasis
Projet ERC : UnLost (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université Friedrich-Alexander d'Erlangen-Nuremberg — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3364635.0 €

The loss of something precious triggers an immediate instinct to find it. But what if the quest does not end there? We see it and find it, yet the precious object is irreparably damaged, and its true knowledge is locked away behind its damage, frustratingly denying us access to the information it holds. In such cases, the object essentially remains lost. Each day, in fact, treasured relics bearing unique witness to the human experience are lost to decay and damage due to the elements of the environment, the ravages of time, and the hands of war. And while we rejoice at every inspiring, arduous discovery and recovery of a physical object, we often must acknowledge that much of the knowledge it contains remains lost. UnLost will revolutionise the way we study damaged, complex heritage materials by capitalising upon today’s vast scientific capabilities. UnLost will harness these capabilities to capture immense amounts of disparate data and combine them with a novel, much-needed systematic and rigorous process to extract, integrate, study, archive, and protect multi-modal data so that lost knowledge is rendered – and kept – UnLost. The Herculaneum papyrus scrolls, buried and carbonised by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE and then excavated in the 18th century, represent the epitome of such found, yet still lost, heritage. The only complete Classical library from the ancient world to have survived and been found in situ, much of the textual material contained in this renowned collection remains hidden within its profoundly damaged and fragmented form. The goal of the UnLost team is to create and deploy new methods of digitization, AI-inspired inference, and archival-quality complex digital objects so as to revive what has been lost from Herculaneum and develop new benchmark approaches for the restoration of damaged heritage objects as a whole.

Mots-clés : digital restoration,herculaneum papyri,material analysis,physical conservation,born digital editions,virtual unwrapping,ancient scrolls,hidden papyrus layers,structured data and metadata
Projet ERC : SHAPE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1974463.0 €

We address a gap in research on the bi-directional effects of language on thought and thought on language, and the developmental pathways that transmit interactions between language and cognition from one generation to the next. The significant empirical advances we propose will result in a unified, cross-disciplinary theory which addresses language diversity through the dynamic interaction of language and cognitive systems across languages and cultures. To this end, we select shape as a core spatial property of entities in the physical world of things which determines bodily action on objects. The abstract properties of shape are codified in multiple ways in the world’s varied languages, including spoken and signed languages – in object and category labels and their organization into classes of categories, spatial prepositions, verbs, and quantifying expressions. Visual shape perception and shape representation in early perceptual and cognitive development are inherently intertwined and interdependent with early language acquisition. Children on atypical developmental trajectories show a cascade of disrupted development in both shape perception and language that can have substantial life-long consequences. Despite this compelling evidence of the pervasiveness of shape, no theoretical account has been offered to explain its nature as a system, neither has this topic been approached integrating evidence and methodologies across disciplines. The main goal of the current endeavor is to provide such an account from the point of view of systems theory and aligning methodologies across vision research, cognitive development, theory of language and language typology and sign language. Our premise is that shape holds a privileged status in human representational systems – in perceiving, using and reasoning about objects and in organizing the structures of the world’s languages and, as such, is key to understanding human intelligence and its developmental trajectories.

Mots-clés : shape perception and representation language development shape bias cross linguistic differences autism developmental language disorder
Projet ERC : MEMELAND (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université de Tromsø — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UiT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 7081063.14 €

MEMELAND will pioneer the creation of Europe's first species-level ecological history, spanning the Roman era to the present day. Our research will unveil the persistent medieval influences in contemporary landscapes and biodiversity. This historical insight will inform proactive land management, conservation, and heritage-informed restoration, crucial for climate change mitigation. Our approach involves sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA), lipid biomarkers, multi-method chronologies, and archaeobotanical analysis at 50 strategically selected lake-pairs across northern and central Europe within three archaeological zones. Additionally, we will go deeper in time and investigate medieval landscape-lake interactions in 3 of the lake pairs. We'll reveal species-level biodiversity, for plants, animals (livestock, fish, birds and invertebrates) and plants-animal-soil pathogens (hologenomic level). Additionally, we'll explore sub-species and landraces within critical taxa (e.g. cereals and domestic livestock).  The geography of present biodiversity is a testament to medieval and early-modern agronomy, population, elite influence (lordship, ecclesiastical), cultivation systems (open-field system), technology (heavy plough) and natural ideologies. By using pairs of lakes, one associated with a high-status site and a nearby lakes with little archaeology, we'll generate geographically representative biodiversity data. This data will enable us to test hypotheses against archaeological, pollen and climate records, and reveal the geographic reality of the ‘medieval agricultural revolution’. Recent advances in sedaDNA analysis, and molecular preservation in temperate climates make MEMELAND a groundbreaking project in both Archaeology and European ecological history. Our work promises to reshape our understanding of the historical interplay between culture and nature and provide critical insights for sustainable land management and climate change mitigation in Europe.

Mots-clés : medieval archaeology,human ecodynamics,vegetation history,sedadna,biomarkers,landscape history,biodiversity,palaeolimnology,historical ecology,heritage management
Projet ERC : TRUST (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Bristol — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1457105.0 €

"Anne believes that Bob assumes that Anne believes that Bob's assumption is false. Does Anne believe that Bob's assumption is false?" Don't try too hard answering the question - any straightforward attempt will lead to paradox. But what are we to make of sentences such as "Anne believes that Bob's assumption is false." Is the sentence true or false? On the face of it, it would seem that answering this question is a pressing problem for natural language semantics that assigns truth conditions to sentences of natural language. However, semanticists have largely ignored problems of this kind, leaving the field to philosophical logicians working on paradoxes, in particular, the paradoxes of truth such as the Liar paradox. But research on the paradoxes of truth has often focused on exploring the space of possible coherent "solutions" to the paradoxes thereby ignoring desiderata of natural language semantics. The project provides a unified perspective on natural language semantics, conceived of as truth-conditional semantics, and the research on the so-called semantic paradoxes in form of theories of self-applicable truth. A unified approach to truth and semantics will need to answer two principal challenges, which divides the research project into two interrelated parts. The first part, Truth in Semantics, aims at developing semantic accounts for rich fragments of natural language, that is, fragments in which, besides the notion of truth, we allow for, e.g., modal expressions, propositional attitudes but also natural language conditionals. The second part, Truth and the Foundations of Semantics, assumes a metasemantic perspective and explores the role of the notion of truth in the foundations of natural language semantics, conceived of as truth-conditional semantics. The project constitutes the first systematic study of truth and natural language semantics from such a combined perspective.

Mots-clés : theories of truth,semantic paradox,natural language semantics,truth conditional semantics,hyperintensionality,modality,propositional attitudes,foundations of truth conditional semantics
Projet ERC : JetCell (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : IMEC — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149379.0 €

'T cell based cancer therapy has been recognized as one of the most promising future cancer therapy methods. In a typical T cell therapy course, relevant T cells are isolated from the patient’s blood, modified against certain cancer markers, and infused back into the patient’s body where the engineered T cells direct the immune system to attack and finally eliminate the malignant tumor cells and tissues. Recent clinical research demonstrated that purified T cell subsets could greatly improve the therapy efficacy. However, currently available T cell enrichment techniques including fluorescence activated cell sorting and immunomagnetic isolation are either too expensive and risky, or they lack the multi-marker support. Therefore, there is a need for safe, affordable and multi-marker based T cell enrichment methods for cell therapy applications. In ERC-SCALPEL project, we developed a thermal vapor bubble jet flow technique for high speed fluorescence cell sorting. The bubble jet flow sorter was based on a precisely fabricated metal heater in a silicon chip. A short current pulse applied to this metal heater induced an array of micro vapor bubbles and consequently a jet flow for high speed aerosol-free cell sorting at 4,000 cells/sec. The bubble jet sorter has shown promise to serve the cell therapy demand: high throughput, high flexibility, guaranteed biosafety and affordability. The JetCell project aims at carrying out a feasibility study of bubble jet sorting technology for the enrichment of T cells as the first step of a typical cell manufacturing process for cancer cell therapy. With a prototype setup, the bubble jet sorter will be assessed in typical pre-clinical cell manufacturing models, from human cell lines to primary blood cells. Meanwhile, the cell therapy manufacturing market will be further analyzed and an initial business development strategy will be investigated.

Mots-clés : cancer therapy,t cell isolation,t cell engineering,high speed cell sorting,cell manufacturing,microfluidic chip platform
Projet ERC : IndiGen (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499375.0 €

10 years after the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, indigenous stakeholders act as global players in arenas such as the UN Convention on Climate Change, the Dakota Access pipeline in the USA, and the Humboldt-Forum in Berlin. Yet, until the 1960s, anthropological inquiries considered the same people as ‘vanishing’ and doomed to disappear. The so-called Indigenous Renaissance presents a remarkable phenomenon of late (post)modernity. How can this surprising process be understood and explained? The objective of this project is to study how indigenous actors evolved from ‘vanishing people’ to global players. The project is located at the disciplinary intersections between anthropology, art, history, philosophy, and politics; and aims at making a future-oriented contribution to (re)emerging indigeneities and the (re)negotiation of their (post)colonial legacies in and with Europe. While the label ‘indigeneity’ circulates globally, it is also defined as a place-based marker of identity. This project breaks new ground by incorporating both dimensions – global circulation and local experience – in a common framework. It does so by studying entangled indigeneities as transregional and transcultural formations along the transpacific intersections between North and South America, Australia and the South Pacific. By untangling these intersections through museums as research sites and laboratories, the project’s sub-objectives are: 1. to historically identify the moments and processes through which indigenous people became re-ascribed through anthropological discourses and their involvement therein, 2. to ethnographically study the ways and forms in which indigenous people appropriate these external ascriptions for self-insertion into global affairs, 3. to experimentally research, in exhibitionary environments, the layers of indigenous continuity beneath the discursive transformation from ‘vanishing people’ to global players.

Mots-clés : indigenous cosmologies,epistemologies,ontologies,contemporary art,post colonial history,history of anthropology,europe and the pacific
Projet ERC : FlexNanoFlow (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Delft University of Technology — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Delft
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 805780.16 €

2D nanomaterials hold immense technological promise thanks to extraordinary intrinsic properties such as ultra-high conductivity, strength and unusual semiconducting properties. Our understanding of how these extremely thin and flexible objects are processed in flow is however inadequate, and this is hindering progress towards true market applications. When processed in liquid environments to make nanocomposites, conductive coatings and energy storage devices, 2D nanomaterials tend to fold and break owing to strong shear forces produced by the mechanical agitation of the liquid. This can lead to poorly-oriented, crumpled sheets of small lateral size and therefore of low intrinsic value. Orientation is also a major issue, as ultra-flexible materials are difficult to extend and align. In this project, I will develop nanoscale fluid-structure simulation techniques to capture with unprecedented resolution the unsteady deformation and fracture dynamics of single and multiple sheets in response to the complex hydrodynamic load produced by shearing flows. In addition, I will demonstrate via simulations new strategies to exploit capillary forces to structure 2D nanomaterials into 3D constructs of desired morphology. To guide the simulations and explore a wider parameter space than allowed in computations, I will develop conceptually new experiments on “scaled-up 2D nanomaterials”, macroscopic particles having the same dynamics as the nanoscopic ones. The simulations will include continuum treatments and atomistic details, and will be analysed within the theoretical framework of microhydrodynamics and non-linear solid mechanics. By uncovering the physical principles governing flow-induced deformation of 2D nanomaterials, this project will have a profound impact on our ability to produce and process 2D nanomaterials on large scales.

Mots-clés : particulate flows
Projet ERC : 4-OCEANS (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Universidade Nova de Lisboa — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : NOVA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1796857.5 €

4-OCEANS aims to assess the importance of marine life for human societies during the last two millennia. We contend that the harvest of marine resources played a critical, but as yet underappreciated and poorly understood, role in global history. To bridge this gap in our understanding, the four PIs will form an interdisciplinary team combining expertise in marine environmental history, climate history, natural history, geography, historical ecology and zooarchaeology. We will examine when and where marine exploitation was of significance to human society; how selected major socio-economic, cultural, and environmental forces variously constrained and enabled marine exploitation; and identify the consequences of marine resource exploitation for societal development. Through these objectives we will discover how marine resources as novel wealth altered societies throughout history. How might marine wealth have enabled some societies to escape food shortages? How did it trigger long-term socio-economic impacts and ecological consequences? How were marine resources valued, consumed, and energetically transformed? Revealing this history will open a new window on human-nature dynamics of profound importance for understanding developmental trajectories of human societies. 4-OCEANS will transcend the binary distinctions of East and West, global-north and global-south, indigenous and colonial, resource exploitation and wildlife conservation, nature and culture. In doing so, 4-OCEANS will uncover and chart historical trajectories towards sustainable and unsustainable food security and resource extraction, identifying their complex underlying drivers.

Mots-clés : marine environmental history,environmental archaeology,climate history