Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Protein degraders for targeting galectin-8 (PROTAG-8)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area
Programme: Widening participation and spreading excellence
Theme: Attracting and mobilising the best talents
Destination: Attracting and mobilising the best talents
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Chemistry
Countries involved: Slovenia,Sweden
Call: Fostering balanced brain circulation – ERA Fellowships (HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-TALENTS-04, 2022)
Start date: 2024-09-01
End date: 2026-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 155559.36
EU funding (EUR): 155559.36
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

In the PROTAG-8 project, we aim to target galectin-8 by protein degradation using proteolysis targeting chimeras or shortly, PROTACs. Galectin-8 is a galactoside-binding lectin that exists as a soluble intracellular and extracellular receptor, with an extensive exchange between the membrane-bound and cytosolic forms. Its inhibitors are potential new anticancer drugs, but the affinity of classical galectin-8 inhibitors is in the low micromolar range, hardly sufficient for their use as drug molecules. The overarching aim of PROTAG-8 is to explore whether the PROTAC method can be implemented for galectin-8 and to answer the question of whether PROTACs offer advantages over classical selective galectin-8 ligands. Since PROTACs need only bind their targets with high selectivity and with an affinity high enough to stabilize the ternary complex between the protein of interest and the E3 ligase, the affinity in the micromolar range could be sufficient for their activity, unlike conventional ligands. The current state-of-the-art in the development of PROTACs focuses only on intracellular proteins, but galectin-8 exists as both an intracellular and extracellular protein. Based on this fact, we want to find out whether such a receptor, which occurs both in the cytosol and in the extracellular matrix, can be effectively targeted with PROTACS and its activity modulated. This scientific question will be tackled by a highly-qualified PhD Nives Hribernik with international experience in glycochemistry, medicinal chemistry and chemical biology, and is expected to be an excellent springboard to her independent scientific career. The project proposal includes renowned principal investigators from two academic institutions: Prof. Dr. Marko Anderluh from the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), and Prof. Dr. Ulf Nilsson and Prof. Derek Logan from Lund University (Sweden), giving the PROTAG-8 international and interdisciplinary background.

Keywords: carbohydrate binding receptors,galectins,galectin 8,proteolysis targeting chimeras protacs
Mental Health of Employees: Analysis and Learnings (M-HEAL)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Economic Sciences
Countries involved: Denmark
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-08-01
End date: 2027-07-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 247553.28
EU funding (EUR): 247553.28
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

M-HEAL seeks to investigate the impact of modern workplace dynamics—specifically, market competition, automation, and organizational restructuring—on employees' mental health. The objectives of this study are threefold: (1) to identify the key factors influencing employees' mental health within the context of these workplace changes, (2) to quantify the extent to which these factors impact mental health, and (3) to explore how these effects vary across different individual, firm, and industry characteristics. The study will utilize an interdisciplinary approach to achieve these objectives, integrating insights from industrial organizations, labor economics, and health economics. The research will be conducted in Denmark, leveraging its comprehensive and longitudinal register data, which provides a unique opportunity to analyze these dynamics over a 20-year period. The methodology is structured into three work packages: a literature review and meta-analysis to establish a conceptual framework, a causal analysis using advanced microeconometric methods to identify the effects of workplace dynamics on mental health, and a heterogeneity analysis to assess how these effects differ across various demographic and firm characteristics. The relevance of this research to the work program lies in its potential to address the increasing societal challenge of workplace-related mental health issues, which are becoming more prevalent as economic and technological changes accelerate. By providing a deeper understanding of the causal relationships between workplace dynamics and mental health, this study aims to inform the development of targeted policies and interventions that can reduce the burden of work-related stress and improve overall mental health outcomes. The findings are expected to have significant implications for both academic research and practical policy-making, contributing to the broader goals of promoting health and well-being in the workplace across Europe.

Keywords: health economics,competition economics,behavioral economics
Inclusive artificial intelligence using adaptive federated learning across high- and low-resource settings (AIFIX)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Spain
Call: ERC PROOF OF CONCEPT GRANTS (ERC-2024-POC, 2024)
Start date: 2025-10-01
End date: 2027-03-31
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The AIFIX project is a transformative initiative aiming to bridge the "healthcare AI divide" by developing an adaptive federated intelligence platform to securely integrate medical imaging data across diverse environments. It specifically targets the inclusion of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where limited data availability, privacy concerns, and inadequate legal frameworks have traditionally hindered AI innovation in healthcare. AIFIX will deliver an adaptive federated learning platform to enable the local training of AI models without the need to transfer raw data, ensuring privacy and compliance with local data protection laws. The platform will be optimised to operate across a variety of computational resource and internet connections, ensuring efficient and stable performance across diverse data centres. The feasibility of this approach will be demonstrated through an inter-continental obstetric imaging study involving diverse sites across Europe, Africa and Asia. From the outset, AIFIX will involve a wide range of stakeholders including healthcare professionals, AI innovators, data managers, and legal experts to ensure the platform meets diverse needs and overcomes potential adoption barriers. Finally, AIFIX will develop a sustainable business model based on detailed market analysis and financial planning. This model will explore various revenue streams such as licensing, subscriptions, and data monetisation, aiming to attract healthcare institutions and AI innovation organisations. The project will also explore federated IP management strategies to protect and share innovations equitably among all contributors. The AIFIX project will represent a significant leap towards equitable AI innovation and utilisation in healthcare, promising to deliver substantial clinical, economic, and societal benefits across the globe.
Postoperative Reduction of Inflammation-Induced Severe Morbidity (PRISM)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Innovative Europe
Programme: The European Innovation Council (EIC)
Theme: EIC Accelerator
Destination: Other destinations
Action type: EIC actions
Countries involved: Germany
Call: EIC Accelerator 2024 - Short application (HORIZON-EIC-2024-ACCELERATOR-01, 2024)
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 25000000.0
EU funding (EUR): 25000000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

tiakis aspires to be a leader in medical innovation by addressing critical unmet needs and improving patient outcomes after major surgeries. Central to tiakis' ambition is a commitment to advancing scientific understanding of the complex mechanisms behind inflammatory processes resulting from major surgeries and triggered innate immune responses. By focusing on developing novel therapeutic solutions based on Tiprelestat, tiakis envisions a future where Tiprelestat is integral to the prevention and management of postoperative inflammatory complications. To achieve these goals, Project PRISM involves completing a Phase III clinical trial to achieve EU market approval for Tiprelestat with oesophageal cancer surgery as a first indication, which has received orphan drug designation from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A successful launch in oesophageal cancer surgery in Europe will allow tiakis to leverage Tiprelestat to further therapeutic applications and establish Tiprelestat as the new preventive standard of care across major surgeries with high unmet demands including liver and kidney transplantation and pancreatic cancer surgery. tiakis has established a growing network of internationally experienced partners and consultants with a wide range of professional competencies in the fields of intellectual property protection, regulatory affairs, preclinical, clinical testing and therapy development, as well as business development and financing. This approach ensures that tiakis is well-equipped to navigate the complexities of bringing Tiprelestat to market and transforming postoperative care.
A new SUPERconducting LANDscape: using nanoscale inhomogeneity for enhanced superconductivity (SUPERLAND)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Condensed Matter Physics
Panel description: Structure, electronic properties, fluids, nanosciences, biological physics
Countries involved: Sweden
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2022-COG, 2022)
Start date: 2023-09-01
End date: 2028-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999433.0
EU funding (EUR): 1999433.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Superconductivity is a truly quantum mechanical phenomenon, strongly dependent on the zero-energy density of states (DOS). This project aims to create and enhance superconductivity using nanoscale inhomogeneity to produce large DOS peaks at zero energy, thereby creating an entirely new, spatial and figurative, landscape for superconductivity. One recent example is twisted bilayer graphene, an all-carbon material that becomes superconducting due to a moiré structure producing large zero-energy DOS peaks. In this project we will establish superconductivity driven entirely by nanoscale inhomogeneity generating zero-energy DOS peaks, including in moiré structures. We will also use zero-energy DOS peaks to create a superconducting phase crystal in many different superconductors, generalizing findings from high-temperature cuprate superconductor surfaces. In the project we will continue to develop our state-of-the-art computational tools to self-consistently study superconductivity in large inhomogeneous systems at the atomistic level.

Keywords: superconductivity,disorder,moire structures,surface states
Safety Mechanisms for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) (AGI-Safety)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Computer Science and Informatics
Panel description: Informatics and information systems, computer science, scientific computing, intelligent systems
Countries involved: Israel
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2025-STG, 2025)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2030-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1625000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1625000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) represents AI systems with human-level cognitive abilities, capable of understanding, learning, and applying knowledge across a wide range of tasks and domains. While AGI holds immense potential to revolutionize industries, its imminent arrival also poses significant threats to society. Without proper safety mechanisms, AGI could cause unintended harm, be misused by malicious actors, or act autonomously in unpredictable and dangerous ways. Our ambitious goal is to pioneer AGI safety by introducing a new paradigm grounded in cybersecurity principles. Current safety mechanisms—such as safeguards and alignment training—are proactive, serve only as the first line of defense, and are insufficient for the complex, autonomous nature of AGI. Stronger, more explicit mechanisms are essential to handle AGI use cases and mitigate their inherent risks. The new paradigm employs a layered approach: beyond proactive safety, we propose adding two additional protective layers. These layers form the novel domains of active and reactive safety, both built upon a foundation of adversarial robustness. Active safety mechanisms, such as fail safes, enable us to detect and correct harmful thoughts made by the AGI in real time and explicitly, ensuring continuous and safe operation while enabling us to perform auditing when necessary. Reactive safety mechanisms, such as kill switches, serve as a last line of defense to contain or neutralize an AGI when all other measures fail. We also propose research into making these safety mechanisms immutable, preventing adversarial bypass. Our preliminary data shows that these mechanisms are feasible and have high potential to outperform existing AI safety approaches. By fundamentally rethinking AI safety for the AGI era, this research aims to ensure we have robust safety mechanisms in place before AGI becomes a reality, while also enhancing the security and reliability of current AI systems in the interim.
Deciphering the role of regulatory factors driving epigenetic inheritance of alternative chromatin states (WaddingtonMemory)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Integrative B iology : from Genes and Genomes to S ystems
Panel description: For all organis ms: Genetics, epigenetics, genomics  and other ‘omics studies , bioinformatics, systems biology , genetic diseases , gene editing, innovative methods and modelling,  ‘omics for personalised  medicine
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC ADVANCED GRANTS (ERC-2023-ADG, 2023)
Start date: 2024-11-01
End date: 2029-10-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2499764.0
EU funding (EUR): 2499764.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Epigenetics, the study of molecules and mechanisms that perpetuate alternative gene activity states in the context of the same DNA sequence, is an exciting field with important epistemological and biomedical implications, but the molecular mechanisms underlying epigenetic inheritance are still little understood. Polycomb group proteins are pleiotropic chromatin components that have been suggested to be capable of driving epigenetic inheritance and their dysregulation leads to cell fate changes and is associated with cancer. Recently, we discovered that a transient decrease in expression of a Polycomb gene can drive the formation of tumors of epigenetic nature, i.e. in the absence of DNA mutations. The goal of WaddingtonMemory is to decipher how epigenetic components can lead to stable changes in cell fate. Specifically, we will: Aim 1: Identify the molecular steps leading to epigenetic cell fate derailment following transient Polycomb protein depletion in Drosophila. We will perform a time-course study using bulk and single-cell multiomic and imaging approaches in order to dissect the dynamics of cell fate transformation. Aim 2: Identify the Polycomb-targets leading to cell fate dysregulation and decipher their mechanistic role. We will test candidate factors identified in Aim 1 in order to identify those that drive cell fate derailment and to elucidate their mode of action. Aim 3: Test the role of epigenetic inheritance in mammalian cell differentiation. We will analyse the role of epigenetic inheritance in mouse gastruloids, an in vitro system that reflects cell differentiation events typically found in early embryogenesis. Together, this groundbreaking project will reveal how epigenetic components drive cell fate derailment and it will establish robust paradigms that can be utilized by the scientific community to discriminate between epigenetic inheritance and DNA sequence-mediated cell transformation.lli

Keywords: drosophila,development,cancer,gastruloid,epigenomics,3d genome,polycomb proteins,ctcf
SAFETYFANS: SAFEty and sustainabiliTY by design: a Framework for Advanced Nano-materials Synthesis. (SAFETYFANS)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Chemistry
Countries involved: Italy
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2022 (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-11-01
End date: 2025-10-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 172750.08
EU funding (EUR): 172750.08
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

"We synthesized a nanoform of novel functions! But, is it safe? Is it sustainable?" The Supervisor’s team in ISTEC-CNR (Host) synthesizes in their laboratory facilities new nanoforms (NF) with enhanced functionality. Their lab is a globally reputable center that over the years have established infrastructure and knowledge in developing novel nanoformulations. Everchanging, interactive, NF have a fate hard to track and policy makers, with precaution, limited NF use. However, valuable functionalities led to European initiatives to adopt the safety and sustainability by design (SSbD) concept, that ensures safety intervening at the design stage, avoiding later use uncertainties. But beyond concept, roadmaps are yet to be drawn and practices to be tried. The questions above are now addressed to the Researcher, who, during her PhD, predicted the toxicity of NF based on their physicochemical characteristics using Machine Learning (ML). The team will realize a central aspect of the SSbD concept: the design, development and validation of a framework that predicts safety, sustainability, and functionality at the synthesis stage of NF, based on previous knowledge, using ML. This framework allows in-silico testing impact on SSbD of changes in NF features without conducting the actual resource-consuming experiments. The endeavor is rooted on information digitization built on exploiting the Host’s industry and academia network and using its laboratory infrastructure to deploy real cases. The project unlocks NF applicability potential, proposes a pragmatic methodology on SSbD implementation and increases public confidence towards nanotechnology and ML. Multidisciplinarity and the Host’s extroversion will distinguish the Researcher in the growing market of scientific integrators as employees and consultants. The acquired experience is also valuable to policy institutions, aligning with the EU Green Deal position on SSbD, and the merging of disciplines in a data-connected world.
Understanding Lung Cancer related risk factors and their Impact (LUCIA)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Mission
Theme: Cancer
Destination: Cancer
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Israel,Germany,Spain,Türkiye,Latvia,Belgium,Netherlands,Italy,United Kingdom
Call: Better understanding of the impact of risk factors and health determinants on the development and progression of cancer (HORIZON-MISS-2021-CANCER-02, 2021)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2026-12-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 13516869.0
EU funding (EUR): 13516869.0
Participants: 24
Project status: SIGNED

Lung Cancer (LC) is the biggest cancer killer worldwide, with five-year survival following diagnosis varying between 5% to 25%. Though tobacco smoking has long been recognized as the major risk factor for LC, many cases (incl. LC patients that are non-smokers) cannot be explained by this reason. In this sense, LUCIA aims to establish a novel toolbox for discovering and understanding new risk factors that contribute to LC development. The toolbox encompasses the analysis of three aspects: (i) personal risk factors, which include a person’s exposure to chemical pollutants and behavioural and lifestyle factors; (ii) external risk factors, such as urban, built and transport environments, social aspects and climate; and (iii) biological responses to the personal and external risk factors, including changes in genetics, epigenetics, metabolism and aging. Key components of the toolbox for analysing personal and external risk factors include retrospective and prospective cohort databases, AI models, wearable devices, novel non-invasive sensors, and multi-omics. Together, these tools will be used to identify the effects of a wide range of environmental, biological, demographic, community and individual-level risk factors associated with the formation of LC. Molecular changes associated with the risk factors identified by this set of tools will then be validated by cell and molecular biology methods and through in vivo analysis. The impact of the identified personal and external risk factors and the associated biological responses will be then validated in three clinical use cases: general population risk assessment and screening, precision screening of high-risk populations, and digital diagnostics. The resulting evidence within LUCIA will be translated into policymaking recommendations, with the aim to implement them in a screening program for LC. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on ‘Understanding'.

Keywords: risk factors toolbox,lung cancer,prevention,screening,health cohorts,wearables,sensors