Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : MONOFUN-CV (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Atherosclerosis is the major underlying pathology of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), which remain the leading cause of death worldwide. The relevance of miRNAs in vascular biology, atherosclerosis and CVD has been well established. Our discovery of an aptamer-like binding of an endogenous miRNA to proteins, namely that of nuclear miR-126-5p to caspase-3, as facilitated by the RNA-binding protein MEX3A has extended the classical paradigm of miRNA function in the RISC, adding a new layer to the mechanisms enacted by miRNAs. Taking MEX3A as a starting point, MONO-FUN-CV aims to (1) characterize cell-specific contributions of MEX3A to mouse atherosclerosis and an association of MEX3a risk variants with human atherosclerosis, to dissect the specificity of its cross-talk with miR-126-5p, and to unravel potential MEX3A-based therapeutic options; we will (2) conduct an unbiased analysis of miRNAs affected by MEX3A (e.g. by eCLIP), elucidate the structural basis and mechanisms controlling MEX3A functions, e.g. ternary complex formation with AGO2, nuclear shuttling, and involvement of other adaptors (proteins, RNA); and (3) we will clarify structural bases and sequence requirements of miR-126-5p interactions with caspase-3, and its physiological relevance using novel in vivo models, as well as screen other miRNAs and proteins engaging in functional interactions, such as miR-210-5p and HIF-1α, to define templates for novel molecular modulators, e.g. aptamers. All aims include unbiased strategies to discover related miRNAs (e.g. nuclear, MEX3A-interacting) and adaptors contributing to the control of protein functions. These aims are highly interconnected and may enable groundbreaking insights into non-canonical mechanisms of miRNAs and their translation into novel approaches for therapeutic targeting of CVD and beyond.

Mots-clés : microrna,atherosclerosis,rna therapeutics
Projet ERC : HERITAGE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2294070.0 €

The project's aims are the transcription from shorthand and study of the writings of Kurt Gödel, Gerhard Gentzen, and Paul Bernays on the main problem of the foundations of mathematics, namely the consistency of analysis. These rich sources have remained inaccessible because of their archaic shorthand. Previous work by the PI on Gödel's and Gentzen's shorthand notes has led to stunning discoveries published in many articles and eight books, but it has left the said main problem untouched. The most important uncharted source in Gödel are his 16 "Arbeitshefte," each running up to a hundred pages, and developing topics such as intuitionistic analysis and computable functionals. With Gentzen, the main sources, in another shorthand, are his two long series of notes, the "WA" (Consistency of analysis) and the "BTIZ" (Proof theory of intuitionistic arithmetic). With Bernays, the main sources are his detailed notes for two lecture courses on logic in Göttingen, in 1927 and 1929-30 that surpass by a wide margin anything known before about the birth of today's logic. The first phase of transcription and translation into English of the project aims at finishing volumes that contain all these source materials. After the first phase, a second, interpretive phase of study will be carried through. This is done in collaboration with six leading experts, chosen from different domains so that their expertise as a whole encompasses the topics and results uncovered by the first phase of the project. The project as a whole points at a new approach to the historical study of the development of science and philosophy: It is estimated that there exist thousands of exact recordings of lecture courses in shorthand by students, what are called "Mitschriften." The study of these vast sources will open up a new, third type of sources in the history of science, next to (a) publications and author manuscripts and (b) correspondence: How were the new theories presented to students?

Mots-clés : development of logic,g del,gentzen,bernays
Projet ERC : ArchLabour (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Associacao iscte conhecimento e inovacao - centro de valorizacao e transferencia de tecnologias — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CVTT-ISCTE
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499996.0 €

The discipline of architecture, when dealing with Public Works associated with colonialism and territorial occupation, still focuses on the analysis of the constitution of the design teams, of the colonial Public Works offices, of the architects and engineers themselves. This focus on the “designing elite” misses a critical input to these Public Works, namely the Labour force responsible for realising these structures. As such, critical questions about the labour force engaged in the spatialization of architectural plans are still missing: who were those workers? What ethnic groups did they come from? How did they emerge in contingents that could aggregate a few thousand individuals? What was their recruitment like? What expectations did they have? How were they paid? What training did they receive? What repercussions did these (mostly compulsive) work experiences have? What conflicts did they provoke in colonial societies? How did they resist recruitment? How did they collaborate? How to deal with this legacy? In answer, ArchLabour will develop a new theoretical framework for assessing mass labour in order to shine a spotlight on these invisible workers, thus establishing a connection between historical subalternity and the inequality that still haunts communities inheriting this past. Through the study of the diverse colonial experiences of the African countries that have Portuguese as one of their official languages (Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Principe, Angola and Mozambique), and covering a wide period from the modern colonization that begins after the Berlin Conference through the industrial capitalism’s exploitation praxis up to the years immediately following African independence, the project will cross the history of colonial architecture and the subject of Labour, with the history of Science applied to construction and post-colonial studies in architecture.

Mots-clés : mass labour colonial architecture portuguese colonialism
Projet ERC : Tree2Globe (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université de Birmingham — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 18846.0 €

Three trillion trees lie behind a carbon sink that has taken up about 30% of humanity’s carbon emissions over recent decades. Yet whether we can continue to rely on this huge natural subsidy is highly uncertain. The sink emerges from systematic perturbations in the dynamics of growth, death and establishment of individual trees. Taken together across the forest, these lead to the net uptake or release of carbon. Both theory and recent observations point towards profound changes in these dynamics of the world’s forests being underway, potentially causing the sink to saturate and decline. But our ability to accurately assess and quantify such on-going changes worldwide is severely limited. The reasons for this are twofold: a lack of standardised measurements of the sink and the dynamics that cause it across the world, and the difficulty of modelling the dynamics of trillions of trees. Tree2Globe solves both of these limitations, using a novel model-data assimilation approach to consistently integrate the dynamics of millions of observations of individual trees collected under disparate protocols worldwide and link together this information in space and time based on physically-consistent principles. The resulting global forest reanalysis system will (a) provide a step-change in capability to make accurate and timely assessment of the rates of tree growth, death and establishment globally and (b) quantify how these combine with the legacies of past land-use and disturbance to explain the size, location and trajectory of the global carbon sink in trees over the period 1990-2027. This will enable us to make a definitive assessment of whether hypothesised changes in forest dynamics and the resulting carbon sink are coming to pass. This unique insight into how the world’s forests and their contribution to climate change mitigation are changing will provide key information to help guide the world to meet its net zero emissions policy commitments.

Mots-clés : forest carbon sink forest dynamics reanalysis vegetation modelling
Projet ERC : CORTICAL RHYTHMS (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : BCBL
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Speech processing and reading are essential unique human abilities underpinning social, educational, and professional advancement. However early biomarkers for learning disabilities such as Developmental Dyslexia (DD) and for second language learning have yet to be identified. Here, cutting edge neuroimaging tools, carefully designed tasks, and longitudinal designs will be used to record cortical tracking of speech (CTS), namely, the temporal alignment between fluctuations in the speech signal and fluctuations in electrical brain activity across different populations. Specifically, we will investigate the predictive ability and causality of CTS 1) at an early age in language development, 2) for second language learning, reading, DD and illiteracy, 3) establish the domain-specificity of CTS as ‘biomarker of language processing’, and 4) pioneer a real-time closed-loop neurofeedback protocol modulating CTS to adaptively change language processing and learning through neurofeedback. This project represents a radically new scientific approach that will break new ground by investigating the predictive ability of CTS that combined with longitudinal designs and real-time closed-loop neurofeedback will allow us to (1) establish causal relationships and (2) use this novel approach to improve L2 learning and to diagnose and remediate DD.

Mots-clés : language oscillatory activity cognitive psychology developmental dyslexia literacy brain stimulation brain plasticity sign language visual attention language rhythms cognitive neuroscience longitudinal designs neurofeedback closed loop eeg meg mri
Projet ERC : MetaMicro (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Université d'Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2757847.0 €

Theoretical ecology has genuine potential to revolutionise microbiology, and vice versa. However, current models, such as the Lotka-Volterra equations, are typically too simplistic to apply and test rigorously. Critically, these models fail to capture microbial metabolism, which my lab and others have found central to predicting the ecology of diverse communities. My goal, therefore, is to develop a new theory of microbial ecology, rooted in metabolism, and to rigorously test it. We will capture nutrient competition, cross-feeding, interference competition and phage, and build our framework using methods from statistical mechanics. Throughout, we will experimentally test our theory using the gut microbiota as a model system. We will address three fundamental questions: 1: What determines the composition and stability of communities? Theory will be parameterised with large-scale culturing on defined media, metabolomics and whole-genome metabolic models. We will empirically test our ability to predict composition and ecological stability, and to understand the diversity-stability relationship. 2: What determines ecological success? We will study what makes a strain successful within a community, incorporating metabolism, bacterial warfare, and phage predation. 3: How does the host environment shape microbial ecology? We will employ agent-based simulations to capture spatial structure and test them with a new in-vitro organoid model of the human gut mucosa and our new in-vivo imaging pipeline for mouse microbiomes. Our plans have risk because ecological systems are complex and hard to understand. However, our work promises to deliver a step-change in both ecology and microbiology by making the study of microbial communities a predictive science, where one can understand ahead-of-time how particular sets of species will behave as a system. Furthermore, we will help establish the ecological principles needed to rationally manipulate our own microbiomes.

Mots-clés : ecology,human microbiome,theoretical ecology
Projet ERC : AGTC (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : University Medical Center Utrecht — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UMC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Innovation: We recently developed a targeted lipid nanopar We recently developed a targeted lipid nanoparticle (tLNP) that can insert a gene directly into the genome of T cells in vivo, with efficiency comparable to viral methods. This innovation creates a unique opportunity to track gene delivery using barcoded synthetic vectors. These barcodes help us understand the key factors needed for effective DNA delivery and the biological consequences of gene transfer. Background: Gene therapy holds great promise for treating various diseases. Viral vectors are currently the most common method for gene transfer, but they come with limitations like size restrictions on nucleic acids, triggering immune responses, and complicated production processes. Synthetic vectors like LNP have made significant strides, as shown by the success of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, which demonstrate the efficacy, scalability and cost-effectiveness of LNP. However, LNP have struggled with efficient gene transfer. Improving this is challenging due to the vast nanomedicine design space and poor correlation between in vitro and in vivo results. Barcoding technology has revolutionized LNP design by allowing higher throughput screening, enabling comprehensive sampling of the design space in living organisms. To apply this to gene transfer, a working prototype is necessary. Our recent success with LNP-mediated gene transfer serves as this foundation for rational optimization of synthetic vectors using DNA-encoded peptide barcodes. Objectives: The AGTC project will explore three main research lines: 1. Nanomedicine Design: Efficiently explore the design space to optimize LNP. 2. Targeting: Investigate precision and flexibility of targeting, particularly in T cells. 3. T Cell Biology: Link gene transfer to biological activity, focusing on CAR T cells. Outcomes: AGTC will enhance our understanding of what drives effective DNA delivery, paving the way for a new generation of synthetic gene transfer therapies.

Mots-clés : genetic barcoding,chimeric antigen receptor t cells,lipid nanoparticles,targeted drug delivery
Projet ERC : S-OIL (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Stichting transnational institute — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TNI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2496500.0 €

S-OIL is a transregional investigation into the nature, roles and developmental footprints of national oil companies (NOCs) facing the urgency of decarbonisation and the challenges of the global energy transition. Its significance and timeliness have been highlighted by growing academic and policy debates around the resurgence of the state, changing world geopolitics and the phasing out of fossil fuels. State-owned oil companies will make or break the energy transition. To date, however, there have been no systematic research efforts nor attempts to theoretically engage with the restructuring of NOCs and its broader social, economic, political and environmental implications. Other studies have refocused the research agenda on the ‘greening’ of the oil industry; still, most of the recently published scientific literature has been framed by the specific conditions of a few countries and companies. My project, instead, will focus on the concrete significance and challenges of NOCs in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The overall goal is to critically assess the nature, roles and impacts of NOCs, charting a likely evolution and examining these companies’ opportunities, limitations and challenges while exploring alternatives to market-driven economics and politics in oil-producing countries. The research will be structured around three intertwined objectives: 1. To appraise national oil companies' shifting nature and significance in the Global South. 2. To assess the societal and developmental footprint of national oil companies. 3. Critically evaluate whether and how national oil companies can be transformed in the face of climate change and the urgent need to decarbonise the energy sector. The work plan has been structured around an exhaustive mapping and characterisation of NOCs, an in-depth analysis of transformative experiences, processes and trends in three world regions, and ethnographic research on transformative cases of public ownership in the oil industry.

Mots-clés : just transition state owned enterprises energy transition hydrocarbons oil africa asia latin america
Projet ERC : Re-COLL (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : University Medical Center Utrecht — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UMC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1859082.5 €

How can we durably regenerate damaged tissues in our body? At present, the answer to this question is largely unknown. Cell-based tissue engineering approaches can be used to produce living implants in the laboratory with a composition that is not unlike real tissues. However, the collagen-based matrix within such structures often lacks the specific intricate organisation that is imperative for the required biomechanical properties, functionality and mechanical stability. This is the cause of our inability to provide a durable cure for damaged tissues that are mechanically challenged, such as articular cartilage. In Re-COLL, I aim to unravel the triggers that underlie the formation, guidance and integration of the structural anisotropic collagen networks in articular cartilage and leverage biofabrication technologies and biointerface engineering to generate durable implants for the restoration of damaged joints. With my multidisciplinary team, I will identify the (bio)chemical, physical and mechanical factors that can influence the formation and integration of the engineered collagen engineered collagen network. For this purpose, I will create unique in vitro and ex vivo models specifically designed for studying the organisation of anisotropic collagen networks in cartilage tissue. With the generated new insights, I will engineer larger tissue grafts that allow the guidance of the structural collagen organisation, as well as its integration within the recipient. To delineate the interplay between the anisotropic collagen networks and tissue function, I will extensively evaluate the performance of cartilage grafts at the tissue and organ level. Through Re-COLL, I will advance the scientific field of orthopaedic regeneration by tackling major gaps in knowledge and technology to set the fundamentals for engineering more functional and stable biosimilars that can restore tissue anisotropy in patients.

Mots-clés : biofabrication cartilage collagen melt electrowriting joint preservation bioprinting
Projet ERC : Evo-immuno (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Guangzhou Medical University — Pays : Chine — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : GMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

As we have seen with the emergence of viral pathogens like Ebola, ZIKA and SARS-CoV2, our societies are, and will continue to be, confronted to unknown and perilous viruses. To prepare for this, we propose to explore the diversity of antiviral genes in animals. Important signaling nodes have been conserved throughout evolution and regulate expression of antiviral genes that evolve dynamically in response to viral pressure. Because this occurs in parallel between different lineages, each animal has a unique arsenal of antiviral genes, with a core of conserved genes, but also taxon-specific genes, which represent an unexplored resource of potentially unique antiviral mechanisms. Insects, the largest group of animals, present high potential for such project but lack of information on the viruses infecting most of them prevented broad investigation up to now. Our discovery that the cyclic dinucleotide (CDN) cGAMP triggers a strong STING- and NF-B-dependent antiviral protection in drosophila, provides for the first time a handle to access the repertoire of induced antiviral genes in insects. We will exploit the assets of the drosophila model to address the function of cGAS-like receptors and the CDNs they produce. We will use RNA sequencing of cGAMP-stimulated insects and evolution-guided paradigms to identify among the STING-regulated genes candidates for functional antiviral screens in insect and human cells. Hits will be characterized to understand their mode of action. As proof of principle, we will study the function of Nazo, a fast-evolving STING-regulated gene duplicate in drosophila also strongly upregulated by interferons in bats. Overall, this project will provide a unique evolutionary perspective on the STING pathway and will lay the foundations for exploitation of rapidly increasing genomic data to document original antiviral strategies, with the long-term goal of inspiring innovative therapeutic approaches against viral infections.

Mots-clés : evolution insects arthropods