Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : REBORN (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : University of Aveiro — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499683.0 €

Engineered bone tissue has been viewed as a potential alternative to the traditional use of bone grafts, due to their limitless supply and no disease transmission. However, bone tissue engineering practices have not proceeded to clinical practice as it was not yet possible to fully recreate the right conditions to produce relevant large vascularized grafts and enabling their in vivo integration and remodelling. REBORN proposes rather unique toolboxes combining bionstructive biomaterials only based on human proteins obtained from the amniotic membrane (AM) and cells from the umbilical/blood cord for the ground-breaking advances of engineering totally time-self-regulated complex 3D devices, able to adjust the cascade of processes leading to faster high-quality and vascularized new bone tissue formation with minimum pre-processing of cells. Proteins from AM will be chemically modified with bioorthogonal clickable moieties enabling their selective association during the fabrication of liquified pockets or hydrogels. Perm-selective AM-protein membranes will be formed at the interface of aqueous-based emulsions to produce liquified pockets confining all necessary ingredients for internal in vitro tissue development to recreate the bone niche including: (i) the correct cells’ ratio, (ii) hydrogel MicroBlocks that will provide geometrical, mechanical and topographic cues to control cellular behaviour and (iii) bioactive soluble factors. Jammed liquified pockets will be assembled into a final desired implantable device, bound by the developed hydrogels, with clinically relevant size, shape and structural integrity, using non-conventional 3D bioprinting processing methodologies or by physical fixation in bioinspired, periosteum-like, regenerative membranes. Advanced techniques will be employed to characterise the new tissue developed in the hybrid devices, from the ultrastructure of the mineral/organic component, including under distinctive dynamic culturing conditions.

Mots-clés : bone engineering,bioprinting,biomaterials design,biomimetics,macromolecular design,human proteins,structural hydrogels,biomaterials processing,microfabrication
Projet ERC : SCORA (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : University of Copenhagen — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCPH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1249225.0 €

Enhancers control the correct spatio-temporal activation of gene expression. A comprehensive characterization of the properties and regulatory activities of enhancers as well as their target genes is therefore crucial to understand the regulation and dysregulation of differentiation, homeostasis and cell type specificity. Genome-wide chromatin assays have provided insight into the properties and complex architectures by which enhancers regulate genes, but the understanding of their mechanisms is fragmented and their regulatory targets are mostly unknown. Several factors may confound the inference and interpretation of regulatory enhancer activity. There are likely many kinds of regulatory architectures with distinct levels of output and flexibility. Despite this, most state-of-the-art genome-wide studies only consider a single model. In addition, chromatin-based analysis alone does not provide clear insight into function or activity. This project aims to systematically characterize enhancer architectures and delineate what determines their: (1) restricted spatio-temporal activity; (2) robustness to regulatory genetic variation; and (3) dynamic activities over time. My work has shown enhancer transcription to be the most accurate classifier of enhancer activity to date. This data permits unprecedented modeling of regulatory architectures via enhancer-promoter co-expression linking. Careful computational analysis of such data from appropriate experimental systems has a great potential for distinguishing the different modes of regulation and their functional impact. The outcomes have great potential for providing us with new insights into mechanisms of transcriptional regulation. The results will be particularly relevant to interpretation of regulatory genetic variations. Ultimately, knowing the characteristics and conformations of enhancer architectures will increase our ability to link variation in non-coding DNA to phenotypic outcomes like disease susceptibility.

Mots-clés : transcriptional regulation,enhancers,enhancer rna
Projet ERC : QNETWORK (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
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 : 1625000.0 €

Entanglement is arguably the most defining and yet counterintuitive feature of quantum theory. The non-local nature of entanglement provides exciting opportunities for fundamentally new science and technologies. As a prime example, recent theoretical work has uncovered the unique potential of a future quantum network: a network of nodes consisting of multiple well-controlled quantum particles “wired” by quantum entanglement. Such a network would enable distributed quantum computing and simulation, secure communication, enhanced metrology and new fundamental studies of nature. Although recent pioneering advances in quantum control have made quantum networks a realistic prospect, remote entanglement has so far been limited to two long-lived spins in trapped ions, atoms, quantum dots and diamond defect centers. My QNETWORK project will realize a multi-node entanglement-based quantum network. The network will have fully controlled multi-spin nodes at individual diamond defects connected by single-photon links. Using this quantum network I will demonstrate supremacy of a quantum repeater node over direct photon transmission, generate multi-spin entanglement and study its decoherence, realize quantum teleportation across multiple nodes and finally exploit the network for new scientific experiments ranging from super-activation of entanglement distillation to foundational tests to quantum secret sharing. To achieve these ambitious goals, this proposal will capitalize on two recent breakthroughs with single electron spins trapped in diamond defects in my group. First, we have entangled electron spins on different chips (most recently over a distance >1km). Second, we have achieved full control over a handful of nuclear spins near one such electron, providing the required quantum memories. If successful, QNETWORK will yield a versatile multi-node quantum network that will serve as a novel platform for groundbreaking science and as a test-bed for a future quantum Internet.

Mots-clés : diamond color center,electron spin,nuclear spin,solid state,quantum network
Projet ERC : Rhythm and Brains (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Université Catholique de Louvain — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1494900.0 €

Entrainment to music is a culturally widespread activity with increasingly recognized pro-social and therapeutic effects. Music powerfully compels us to move to the musical rhythm, showcasing the remarkable ability of humans to perceive and produce rhythmic inputs. However, the underlying functional mechanisms remain unknown. One view, which dates back to Darwin, is that the relevant mechanisms are ancient and anchored in the evolutionary oldest subcortical parts of the brain. However, recent research argues that rhythm perception is a complex cognitive function involving temporally precise communication between cortical sensory and motor regions, even in the absence of overt body movement or intention to move. This project aims to uncover these mechanisms by combining concepts and methods of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Specifically, the research will (i) unravel the mechanisms at the interface of rhythmic inputs, motor skills and brain activity, (ii) establish the active role of motor representations in rhythm perception, (iii) track the development of these processes even prior to language in infants, and (iv) investigate the physiopathology and restoration of these processes in brain-damaged patients. To achieve these objectives, the project will use a comparable method across different experimental settings, the frequency-tagging approach, whose reliability and advantages have been recently established as an innovative method to capture neural entrainment to rhythm in humans. Results will provide important knowledge into how psychological, environmental and neural mechanisms affect such entrainment. Clarifying these mechanisms provides an optimal framework to unravel the role of an intrinsic sensory-motor coupling underlying perception and how this coupling develops over the lifespan. It is also critical for optimising clinical rehabilitation practices using music as a powerful non-verbal cross-cultural means of communication.

Mots-clés : electroencephalography,frequency tagging,human intracranial recordings,music cognition,rhythm perception,sensorimotor synchronization
Projet ERC : QEntropy (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Imperial College London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Entropy for quantum systems is the fundamental, interdisciplinary concept to quantify the advantage of quantum technologies for processing of information. It is well-established that the quantum advantage originates from the strong correlations found in the entanglement spectrum of multipartite quantum states, as exactly characterised by the information-theoretic tool quantum entropy. Contrary to the case of classical systems, however, our knowledge about the mathematics of quantum entropy is much more limited. Nonetheless, special entropy inequalities that are known to hold in the quantum case, such as the strong sub-additivity of quantum entropy, give crucial insights into the entanglement structure of multipartite quantum states. In this project, I will focus on understanding multipartite entropic constraints, which will lead to tight characterisations of the ultimate, physical limits of quantum information processing. My recent mathematical works in quantum information led to operational extensions of the concept of strong sub-additivity from the seventies. Starting from that, I propose a research program that will lead to an understanding of quantum entropy that is on the same level as for the classical, commutative case. In the first part of my project, I will establish techniques in matrix analysis and optimisation theory to understand the interplay of arbitrarily many non-commuting operators. This mathematical framework will allow to prove novel quantum entropy inequalities that lead to refined approximations on the entanglement structure of multipartite quantum states. Second, I will employ the newly obtained entropic constraints to derive approximation algorithms for a plethora of fundamental problems in quantum information science. This includes schemes for achieving the physical limits of cryptography, resolving entropic additivity questions in information theory, and providing algorithms for the description of strongly interacting many body systems.

Mots-clés : entropy inequalities,multipartite entanglement,multivariate trace inequalities,approximation algorithms,quantum communication,quantum device independent cryptography,quantum many body systems
Projet ERC : ENTRI (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Entité participante : Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499638.0 €

Environmental and internal stimuli are constantly sensed by the body’s two large sensory units, the nervous system and the immune system. Integration of these sensory signals and translation into effector responses are essential for maintaining body homeostasis. While some of the intrinsic pathways of the immune or nervous system have been investigated, how the two sensory interfaces coordinate their responses remains elusive. We have recently investigated neuro-immune interaction at the mucosa of the intestine, which is densely innervated by the enteric nervous system (ENS). Our research has exposed a previously unrecognized pathway used by enteric neurons to shape type 2 immunity at mucosal barriers. Cholinergic enteric neurons produce the neuropeptide Neuromedin U (NMU) to elicit potent activation of type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) via Neuromedin U receptor 1, selectively expressed by ILC2s. Interestingly, NMU stimulated protective immunity against the parasite Nippostrongylus brasiliensis but also triggered allergic lung inflammation. Therefore, the NMU-NMUR1 axis provides an excellent opportunity to study how neurons and immune cells interact to regulate immune responses and maintain body homeostasis. We propose to generate and use elegant genetic tools, which will allow us to systematically investigate the consequences of neuro-immune crosstalk at mucosal surfaces in various disease models. These tools will enable us to selectively measure and interfere with neuronal and ILC2 gene expression and function, thereby leading to an unprecedented understanding of how the components of neuro-immune crosstalk contribute to parasite immunity or allergic disease development. Furthermore, we will progress into translational aspects of NMU-regulated immune activation for human immunology. Therefore, our research has the potential to develop basic concepts of mucosal immune regulation and such discoveries could also be harnessed for therapeutic intervention.

Mots-clés : innate lymphoid cells,mucosal immunology,neuro immune interaction,type 2 immune responses,neuropeptides and inflammation
Projet ERC : ProgrES (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : University of Manchester — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2399830.0 €

Enzymes are now established as highly selective biocatalysts in organic synthesis with the range of catalysts and reactions rapidly increasing through access to large protein databases and high-throughput molecular biology tools for biocatalyst engineering. The diversity of biocatalytic reactions is now at a stage where they can be linked in (chemo)-enzymatic reaction cascades, where two or more chemical and/or enzymatic reactions can be catalysed simultaneously generating de novo biosynthetic pathways for chemical synthesis not found in Nature. These reaction cascades have demonstrated important prior art, however they have been mostly limited to few steps and lack the complexity provided by the natural pharmacopeia. ProgrES aims to achieve a step-change by introducing unprecedented structural complexity into de novo pathways and by moving away from manual to automated, high-throughput cascade design and implementation. The proposal is to use a transdisciplinary approach that addresses three important bottlenecks: i. Identification of enzymatic reactions that allow early functionalisation and late stage diversification of the cascade toolkit to increase structural complexity, building on C-H activation mediated by monooxygenases, which are well established in our research group. ii. As diversity of targets increases, high resolution structural analysis of pathway intermediates and products becomes a bottleneck, which is addressed by high-throughput label free mass spectrometry based analytical tools that will match the demands on timescale and numbers. iii. In parallel, we will establish bioinformatics tools adapted from both chemical synthesis and biosynthesis, to allow programmable enzymatic synthesis for cascade design. As proof-of-concept and test bed for the ProgrES platform we aim to generate a library of diverse synthetic imino sugars. This proposal will lead to a major breakthrough in creating a diverse range of scaffolds of therapeutic interest.

Mots-clés : biocatalysts,organic synthesis,reaction cascades,de novo biosynthetic pathways,analytical tools,programmable enzymatic synthesis,imino sugars
Projet ERC : FLUIZYME (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Technical University of Denmark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DTU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2352846.0 €

Enzymes are the protein-based catalysts found throughout nature and are of immense scientific importance, and of great practical value in medicine, chemistry and biotechnology. In most practical applications (such as industrial biocatalysis), enzymes are exposed to non-natural conditions, resulting in a loss of stability. Our understanding of what leads to a loss in enzyme stability under these conditions is very poor and therefore the aim of this project is to obtain such understanding. Current studies on enzyme stability mostly measure thermodynamic stability, and in some more limited cases operational stability, after exposure to different conditions (such as different temperatures and pH values). However, they overlook the effect of mixing, exposure to high concentrations of reactant and product as well as to dynamic fluid-fluid interfaces, all of which are common in a most practical applications. This project aims to understand the effect on enzyme stability of exposure to such non-natural conditions, using designed experiments in novel apparatus (mimicking industrial conditions), complemented by a suite of analytical characterization tools. The result of such studies will firstly enable the re-design of suitable equipment for industrial biocatalysis, which is of increasing interest as an alternative catalytic method for the synthesis and production of a vast array of valuable products. Secondly, the knowledge gained will be of great importance for protein engineering, providing the basis for pre-screening of enzymes on the basis of stability. Finally, the results will also have implications for other areas of bioprocessing, including microbial fermentation for the extracellular to produce enzymes and cell culture to produce therapeutic proteins.

Mots-clés : biocatalysis,bioprocessing,proteins,enzymes,stability,mixing,static interfaces,dynamic interfaces,cycling
Projet ERC : 3DEpi (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Inserm
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 59737.5 €

Epigenetic inheritance entails transmission of phenotypic traits not encoded in the DNA sequence and, in the most extreme case, Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance (TEI) involves transmission of memory through multiple generations. Very little is known on the mechanisms governing TEI and this is the subject of the present proposal. By transiently enhancing long-range chromatin interactions, we recently established isogenic Drosophila epilines that carry stable alternative epialleles, defined by differential levels of the Polycomb-dependent H3K27me3 mark. Furthermore, we extended our paradigm to natural phenotypes. These are ideal systems to study the role of Polycomb group (PcG) proteins and other components in regulating nuclear organization and epigenetic inheritance of chromatin states. The present project conjugates genetics, epigenomics, imaging and molecular biology to reach three critical aims. Aim 1: Analysis of the molecular mechanisms regulating Polycomb-mediated TEI. We will identify the DNA, protein and RNA components that trigger and maintain transgenerational chromatin inheritance as well as their mechanisms of action. Aim 2: Role of 3D genome organization in the regulation of TEI. We will analyze the developmental dynamics of TEI-inducing long-range chromatin interactions, identify chromatin components mediating 3D chromatin contacts and characterize their function in the TEI process. Aim 3: Identification of a broader role of TEI during development. TEI might reflect a normal role of PcG components in the transmission of parental chromatin onto the next embryonic generation. We will explore this possibility by establishing other TEI paradigms and by relating TEI to the normal PcG function in these systems and in normal development. This research program will unravel the biological significance and the molecular underpinnings of TEI and lead the way towards establishing this area of research into a consolidated scientific discipline.

Mots-clés : polycomb,3d chromosome organization,chromatin,gene expression,hi c,microscopy,drosophila genetics