Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Laser-induced vapour nanobubbles for intracellular delivery of nanomaterials and treatment of biofilm infections (NANOBUBBLE)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Panel description: Medical technologies and tools for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases, therapeutic approaches and interventions, pharmacology, preventative medicine, epidemiology and public health, digital medicine
Countries involved: Belgium,France
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2014-CoG, 2014)
Start date: 2015-09-01
End date: 2021-02-28
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2236250.0
EU funding (EUR): 1980000.0
Participants: 3
Project status: CLOSED

Lasers have found widespread application in medicine, such as for photothermal therapy. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), are often used as enhancers of the photothermal effect since they can efficiently absorb laser light and convert it into thermal energy. When absorbing intense nano- or picosecond laser pulses, AuNPs can become extremely hot and water vapor nanobubbles (VNBs) can emerge around these particles in tissue. A VNB will expand up to several hundred nm until the thermal energy from the AuNP is consumed, after which the bubble violently collapses, causing mechanical damage to neighbouring structures. In this project the aim is to make use of the disruptive mechanical force of VNBs to enable highly controlled and efficient delivery of macromolecules and nanoparticles in cells and biofilms. First, optical set-ups and microfluidics devices will be developed for high-throughput treatment of cells and biofilms. Second, VNBs will be used to achieve efficient cytosolic delivery of functional macromolecules in mammalian cells by cell membrane perforation or by inducing endosomal escape of endocytosed nanomedicine formulations that are functionalized with AuNPs. These concepts will be applied to tumorigenesis research, generation of induced pluripotent stem cells and modulation of effector T-cells for adoptive T-cell anti-cancer therapy. Third, contrast nanoparticles for cell imaging will be delivered into the cytosol of mammalian cells through VNB induced cell membrane perforation. This will enable more reliable in vivo imaging of labelled cells, labelling of subcellular structures for time-lapse microscopy and intracellular biosensing. Finally, [... confidential...] laser-induced VNBs will be used [... confidential...] for improved eradication of biofilms. This concept will be applied to biofilm infections in dental root canals and chronic wounds.

Keywords: drug delivery,phototherapy,gene therapy,nanomedicines,nanotechnology,biophotonics,nanoparticles,cell therapy,bio imaging,microfluidics,biofilms
Father Trials: Hormonal and Behavioral Experiments on Prenatal and Postnatal Parenting (FATHER TRIALS)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Panel description: Cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, theoretical philosophy
Countries involved: Netherlands,Netherlands
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2014-ADG, 2014)
Start date: 2016-01-01
End date: 2021-12-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2460500.0
EU funding (EUR): 1721992.61
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Fathers have largely been neglected in parenting research -- although they constitute about 50% of parents. The aim of the proposed project is to test the hypothesis that fathers’ parenting is under hormonal control and can be changed by behavioral and hormonal interventions. I propose a series of randomized controlled trials (RCT) focusing on a critical phase of parenthood: the transition to having the first baby. I will test whether experiments that modulate oxytocin and testosterone levels enhance fathers’ neural processing of infant signals and of threats to the infant and stimulate fathers’ parenting quality and involvement in parenting. Drawing firm conclusions about the neural and hormonal basis of human parenting is critically dependent on RCTs. I propose two types of experiments: (1) within-subject trials, using nasal administration of oxytocin, testosterone, and a placebo, and (2) between-subject trials, using behavioral interventions aimed at promoting sensitive parenting and physical contact. The behavioral interventions include prenatal and postnatal video feedback intervention (in the prenatal phase based on ultrasound scans) and the use of soft baby carriers. Both types of trials take place 3 months before the infant’s birth, and 2 and 7 months afterwards. A special focus lies on the aspect of protection: a dimension of parenting that has received considerable attention in animal research but, despite its evolutionary importance, not in studies on humans. Testing the efficacy of the behavioral experiments in boosting fathers’ protective parenting and participation in caregiving activities has clear practical significance (for fathers, mothers, children, and society). At the same time, examining the hormonal and neural mechanisms is crucial for the development of theory on the interplay between neuroscience and parenting.

Keywords: parenting,fathers,family,oxytocin,sensitivity,attachment
Building an Intelligent System of Insights and Action for 5G Network Management (CogNet)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Theme: Future Internet: Software, hardware, Infrastructures, technologies and services
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Germany,Spain,Italy,Ireland,Italy,Israel,Germany,Spain,Ireland,France
Call: Advanced 5G Network Infrastructure for the Future Internet (H2020-ICT-2014-2, 2014)
Start date: 2015-07-01
End date: 2017-12-31
Duration (months): 30.0
Total project cost (EUR): 5972820.0
EU funding (EUR): 5972819.75
Participants: 12
Project status: CLOSED

5G will realise a true Internet of Things, a network capable of supporting potentially trillions of wireless connected devices and with overall bandwidth one thousand times higher that today’s wireless networks. Current 4G technology is approaching the limits of what is possible with this generation of radio technology and to address this, one of the key requirements of 5G will be to create a network that is highly optimised to make maximum use of available radio spectrum and bandwidth for QoS, and because of the network size and number of devices connected, it will be necessary for it to largely manage itself and deal with organisation, configuration, security, and optimisation issues. Virtualisation will also play an important role as the network will need to provision itself dynamically to meet changing demands for resources and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), the virtualising of network nodes functions and links, will be the key technology for this. We believe that Autonomic Network Management based on Machine Learning will be a key technology enabling an (almost) self administering and self managing network. Network software will be capable of forecasting resource demand requirements through usage prediction, recognising error conditions, security conditions, outlier events such as fraud, and responding and taking corrective actions. Energy efficiency will also be a key requirement with the possibility to reconfigure the NFV to for example avail of cheaper or greener energy when it is available and suitable. Again this is directly related to usage prediction both at a macro level, across an entire network, and at a micro level within specific cells. The Cognet proposal will focus on applying Machine Learning research to these domains to enable the level of Network Management technology required to fulfil the 5G vision.

Keywords: machine learning,data analytics,big data,autonomic network management,cloud computing,demand prediction,network resilience,security,network function virtualisation
Harnessing tumor metabolism to overcome immunosupression (ImmunoFit)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Panel description: Organ and tissue physiology, comparative physiology, physiology of ageing, pathophysiology, interorgan and tissue communication, endocrinology, nutrition, metabolism, interaction with the microbiome, non-communicable diseases including cancer (and except disorders of the nervous system and immunity-related diseases)
Countries involved: Belgium
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2017-COG, 2017)
Start date: 2018-07-01
End date: 2024-03-31
Duration (months): 69.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999721.0
EU funding (EUR): 1999721.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Anti-cancer immunotherapy has provided patients with a promising treatment. Yet, it has also unveiled that the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) hampers the efficiency of this therapeutic option and limits its success. The concept that metabolism is able to shape the immune response has gained general acceptance. Nonetheless, little is known on how the metabolic crosstalk between different tumor compartments contributes to the harsh TME and ultimately impairs T cell fitness within the tumor. This proposal aims to decipher which metabolic changes in the TME impede proper anti-tumor immunity. Starting from the meta-analysis of public human datasets, corroborated by metabolomics and transcriptomics data from several mouse tumors, we ranked clinically relevant and altered metabolic pathways that correlate with resistance to immunotherapy. Using a CRISPR/Cas9 platform for their functional in vivo selection, we want to identify cancer cell intrinsic metabolic mediators and, indirectly, distinguish those belonging specifically to the stroma. By means of genetic tools and small molecules, we will modify promising metabolic pathways in cancer cells and stromal cells (particularly in tumor-associated macrophages) to harness tumor immunosuppression. In a mirroring approach, we will apply a similar screening tool on cytotoxic T cells to identify metabolic targets that enhance their fitness under adverse growth conditions. This will allow us to manipulate T cells ex vivo and to therapeutically intervene via adoptive T cell transfer. By analyzing the metabolic network and crosstalk within the tumor, this project will shed light on how metabolism contributes to the immunosuppressive TME and T cell maladaptation. The overall goal is to identify druggable metabolic targets that i) reinforce the intrinsic anti-tumor immune response by breaking immunosuppression and ii) promote T cell function in immunotherapeutic settings by rewiring either the TME or the T cell itself.

Keywords: tumor microenvironment
Knowledge Juicer: Readers get Superpowers (Kjuicer)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Societal Challenges
Programme: Europe in a changing world - inclusive, innovative and reflective societies
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Italy
Call: New business models for inclusive, innovative and reflective societies (H2020-SMEINST-1-2016-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2018-03-01
End date: 2018-08-31
Duration (months): 6.0
Total project cost (EUR): 71429.0
EU funding (EUR): 50000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Content production has increased significantly over the past few decades, both in the public and private sector, driven mostly by the digitization process. Kjuicer is a project that aims at closing the gap between production of written content and our ability to read it. In the past few decades such gap has grown dramatically: estimates run that every day 5 million new articles get published in cyberspace. Kjuicer is a flexible and customizable, deeply user-oriented curation tool. It allows extraction of contents in an innovative way, using highlighting colors hierarchically, yet maintaining completeness of meaning. Through a specific algorithm that scans the content's meta-data, it leverages the user’s highlights to synthesize and organize a text respecting the original version. It then makes multiple versions of it, organized in order of importance, and turns it into a browsable and zoomable resource. Kjuicer offers a potentially disruptive innovation for texts, i.e. a solution to augment reading capabilities. It provides a pre-production service (Editor + Plug-in) and a post-production service (Suite), the first being targeted at creating native content, the second at curating existing documents or web pages. The ever increasing complexity of our world poses knowledge challenges at all levels: from kids in school who are being asked to learn better and more, on more subjects, up to professionals who are competing based on knowledge and ability to handle complex projects. Kjuicer helps also Public Administrations and Large Private/Public Companies that need to increase communicative effectiveness. The product will boost growth of the company, generating over 16M€ cumulated revenues in 5 years and creating 24 new jobs. The total financial requirement amounts to about 1,5M€ over 2 years, with an internal return rate of 67% and Net Present Value of about 2,3M€.

Keywords: highlight,text curation,hierarchical content view,highlighting statistics,pre production,post production,readiness
Photosynthesis and photoprotection regulation in marine cyanobacteria and its potential applications (PHOTO-CY-APPs)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Global Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: Spain,United States
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2018-06-01
End date: 2022-03-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 239191.2
EU funding (EUR): 239191.2
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Carotenoids evolved in cyanobacteria as components of membranes providing a structural role and likely influencing permeability to oxygen. Then they became complexed with proteins that enabled a great diversification in their functions to include both 1O2 quenching and light harvesting in photoprotection. Photo-cy-apps is an ambitious project with the purpose of gaining a comprehensive understanding of the role of OCP and the new HCPs and CTDHs on photoprotection in marine cyanobacteria, with their potential application. The ecological importance of these microorganisms reinforces the relevance of this project, since the putative protecting role of OCP in a major subset of marine picocyanobacteria could be a key factor for their abundance, particularly in regions close to the surface of the ocean, subjected to high irradiances. This project brings two research laboratories together with different and complementary expertise, the Kerfeld lab at the Plant Research Laboratory (PRL) at Michigan State University (MSU and LBNL) in the USA with the expertise in bioinformatics, biophysics and structural biology, and the Garcia-Fernandez lab at the University of Cordoba (UCO) in Spain with the expertise in physiological studies in marine cyanobacteria, to determine the role of these car-binding proteins in marine photoprotection and provide the foundation for the Fellow for her independent career after this interdisciplinary training-through research.

Keywords: marine cyanobacteria,carotenoids,photoprotection,orange carotenoid protein,helical carotenoid protein,phycobilisome,optogenetics
A Software Architecture for Extreme-ScaLe Big-Data AnalyticS in Fog CompuTIng ECosystems (ELASTIC)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Italy,Spain,Spain,Spain,Switzerland,France,Portugal,United Kingdom
Call: Big Data technologies and extreme-scale analytics (H2020-ICT-2018-2, 2018)
Start date: 2018-12-01
End date: 2022-05-31
Duration (months): 42.0
Total project cost (EUR): 5920581.25
EU funding (EUR): 5920581.25
Participants: 11
Project status: SIGNED

Big data is nowadays being integrated in systems requiring to process a vast amount of information from (geographically) distributed data sources, while fulfilling the non-functional properties (real-time, energy-efficiency, communication quality and security) inherited from the domain in which analytics are applied. Examples include smart cities or smart manufacturing domains. ELASTIC will develop a novel software architecture (SA) to help system designers to address this challenge. The SA will incorporate a novel elasticity concept to distribute and orchestrate the resources across the compute continuum (from edge to cloud) in an innovative fog computing environment. The new elasticity concept will enable to match analytics workload demands and fulfilling non-functional properties. The fog computing architecture will incorporate energy-efficient parallel architectures, combined with innovative distributed storage, secure communications and advanced cloud solutions. Overall, the SA will enable the combination of reactive data-in-motion and latent data-at-rest analytics into a single extreme-scale analytics solution, in which the analytics workloads will be efficiently distributed across the compute continuum based on their suitability and data processing needs. The capabilities of ELASTIC will be demonstrated on a real smart-mobility use case, featuring a heavy sensor infrastructure to collect data across the Florence tramway network, equipped with advanced embedded architectures, heterogeneous sensors, V2I connectivity and access to cloud resources. Representative applications for advanced driving assistant systems, predictive maintenance and public/private transport interaction, have been selected to efficiently process very large heterogeneous data streams from distributed sensors. ELASTIC technology will enable the development of innovative mobility services while preparing the technological background for the advent of full autonomous mobility systems.

Keywords: elasticity,fog computing,safety,security,energy efficiency,smart mobility
Manifesting the Simplicity of Scattering Amplitudes (AMPLITUDES)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Fundamental constituents of matter
Panel description: Particle, nuclear, plasma, atomic, molecular, gas, and optical physics
Countries involved: Denmark
Call: ERC Starting Grant (ERC-2017-STG, 2017)
Start date: 2018-02-01
End date: 2023-01-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499695.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499695.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

I propose a program of research that may forever change the way that we understand and use quantum field theory to make predictions for experiment. This will be achieved through the advancement of new, constructive frameworks to determine and represent scattering amplitudes in perturbation theory in terms that depend only on observable quantities, make manifest (all) the symmetries of the theory, and which can be efficiently evaluated while minimally spoiling the underlying simplicity of predictions. My research has already led to the discovery and development of several approaches of this kind. This proposal describes the specific steps required to extend these ideas to more general theories and to higher orders of perturbation theory. Specifically, the plan of research I propose consists of three concrete goals: to fully characterize the discontinuities of loop amplitudes (`on-shell functions') for a broad class of theories; to develop powerful new representations of loop amplitude {\it integrands}, making manifest as much simplicity as possible; and to develop new techniques for loop amplitude {integration} that are compatible with and preserve the symmetries of observable quantities. Progress toward any one of these objectives would have important theoretical implications and valuable practical applications. In combination, this proposal has the potential to significantly advance the state of the art for both our theoretical understanding and our computational reach for making predictions for experiment. To achieve these goals, I will pursue a data-driven, `phenomenological' approach—involving the construction of new computational tools, developed in pursuit of concrete computational targets. For this work, my suitability and expertise is amply demonstrated by my research. I have not only played a key role in many of the most important theoretical developments in the past decade, but I have personally built the most powerful computational tools for their
FRAME - tumor genome-based personalized anti-cancer vaccines off-the-shelf (FRAME)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Innovation in SMEs
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call: SME instrument (H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-1, 2019)
Start date: 2019-08-01
End date: 2020-01-31
Duration (months): 6.0
Total project cost (EUR): 71429.0
EU funding (EUR): 50000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Frame Cancer Therapeutics is a Dutch start-up that develops effective vaccines against cancer, based on frameshift mutations. Driven by the ambition to provide a therapeutic effect for up to 50% of all cancers, Frame aims to alter the status quo of cancer treatment. Our balanced team consists of top researchers and successful biotech entrepreneurs with a track record including the CEO of Crucell , and founder of ProQR. The clinical use of so-called checkpoint inhibitors, which activate the immune system, has shown great effects, particularly for treatment of advanced melanoma. Yet, a large group of cancer patients does not benefit from this treatment alone, and the next step is to combine this general activation of the immune system with tumor-specific vaccination. This has just become possible now that entire tumor DNA sequences get to be routinely read within two weeks, as part of clinical care. The solution that Frame Cancer Therapeutics has developed is a ground-breaking strategy for anti-cancer vaccination using off-the-shelf yet personalized cancer vaccines derived from frameshift mutations. Frame Therapeutics has discovered FRAMES, a source of shared neoantigens induced by frame-shift mutations with unique therapeutic potential. These sequences are usually not expressed in the healthy body, and thus seen as foreign by the immune system. A licensed sets of FRAMES are each specific vaccines for different tumor types (such as breast, lung, kidney, colon, uterine cancer). Most cancer vaccination strategies are based on point mutations unique for each tumor, requiring costly individualized vaccine manufacturing. Frame Therapeutics is the first company entirely focusing on the development of cancer vaccines based on FRAMES, offering off-the-shelf personalized cancer vaccines. This approach allows for economics of scale, reducing time to treatment from months to days, which is critical to patient health, and which will imprcost/benefit ratio’s.

Keywords: cancer vaccine,frame shift,neoantigens,therapeutics