Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Tracking the Dynamics of Human Metabolism using Spectroscopy-Integrated Liver-on-Chip Microdevices (OCLD)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Panel description: Biotechnology using all organisms, biotechnology for environment and food applications, applied plant and animal sciences, bioengineering and synthetic biology, biomass and biofuels, biohazards
Countries involved: Israel
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2015-CoG, 2015)
Start date: 2016-10-01
End date: 2021-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2118175.0
EU funding (EUR): 2118175.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The liver is the main organ responsible for the systemic regulation of human metabolism, responding to hormonal stimulation, nutritional challenges, and circadian rhythms using fast enzymatic processes and slow transcriptional mechanisms. This regulatory complexity limits our ability to create efficient pharmaceutical interventions for metabolic diseases such as fatty liver disease and diabetes. In addition, circadian changes in drug metabolism can impact pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics affecting our ability to optimize drug dosage or properly assess chronic liver toxicity. The challenge in rationally designing efficient drug interventions stems from current reliance on end-point assays and animal models that provide intermittent information with limited human relevance. Therefore, there is a need to develop systems capable of tracking transcriptional and metabolic dynamics of human tissue with high-resolution preferably in real time. Over the past 5 years, we established state-of-the-art models of human hepatocytes; oxygen nanosensors; and cutting-edge liver-on-chip devices, making us uniquely suited to address this challenge. We aim to develop a platform capable of tracking the metabolism of tissue engineered livers in real time, enabling an accurate assessment of chronic liver toxicity (e.g. repeated dose response) and the deconstruction of complex metabolic regulation during nutritional events. Our approach is to integrate liver-on-chip devices, with real time measurements of oxygen uptake, infrared microspectroscopy, and continuous MS/MS analysis. This innovative endeavour capitalizes on advances in nanotechnology and chemical characterization offering the ability to non-invasively monitor the metabolic state of the cells (e.g. steatosis) while tracking minute changes in metabolic pathways. This project has the short-term potential to replace animal models in toxicity studies and long-term potential to elucidate critical aspects in metabolic homeostasis.

Keywords: biomems,human on chip,bioreactors,liver metabolism,circadian rhythms,chrono pharmacology,predictive toxicology,sensors
A combined in vitro and in vivo approach to dissect biochemical network evolution. (EvoCellBio)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Cellular, Developmental and Regenerative Biology
Panel description: Structure and function of the cell, cell-cell communication, embryogenesis, tissue differentiation, organogenesis, growth, development, evolution of development, organoids, stem cells, regeneration, therapeutic approaches
Countries involved: Netherlands
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): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

How do organisms evolve? I propose to study how biochemical networks reorganize during evolution without compromising fitness. This is a complex problem: firstly, it is hard to know if a mutation increased fitness because this depends on the environment it arose in, which is typically unknown. Secondly, it is hard to find out how adaptive mutations improve fitness, because in cells, all biochemical networks are connected. I will reduce the complexity by two approaches, focused on symmetry-breaking in budding yeast, a functionally conserved process, which is the first step for polarity establishment and essential for proliferation. First, I will study how adaptive mutations improve fitness in yeast cells, which are evolved after the deletion of an important symmetry-breaking gene. I will use fluorescent live-cell microscopy of polarisation markers to measure fitness, defined as the rate of symmetry breaking. I will combine my data with a kinetic mathematical model to determine how specific network structures facilitate evolutionary network reorganisation. Second, to test predicted network structures, I will build minimal evolvable networks for symmetry breaking in vitro. In my definition of such a network, all of the components are essential for either fitness or evolvability. I will encapsulate the necessary proteins in emulsion droplets to form a functional evolvable network and use fluorescence microscopy to measure its fitness (the rate of a single protein-spot formation on a droplet membrane) and evolvability (the number of accessible neutral or adaptive mutations in the one-step mutational landscape of the network). Next, I will study how increasing the number of components affects the network’s evolvability and fitness. This research will explain how proteins essential in one species have been lost in closely related species. My expertise with in vitro systems, modelling, biophysics and evolution makes me uniquely qualified for this ambitious project.
Advanced EUV/soft X-ray microscopy in the ultrafast regime: imaging functionality of nanomaterials across length scales (ULTRAIMAGE)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Panel description: Analytical chemistry, chemical theory, physical chemistry/chemical physics
Countries involved: Italy,Netherlands
Call: ERC Starting Grant (ERC-2019-STG, 2019)
Start date: 2021-06-01
End date: 2026-05-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1894577.0
EU funding (EUR): 1894577.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Imaging charge, spin, and energy flow in functional materials when hit by a light pulse, is a current grand challenge in nanotechnology relevant to a host of systems including photovoltaics, optoelectronic and spin devices. The design of such materials relies critically on the availability of accurate characterisation tools of how light-induced function and performance are related to nano-to-mesoscale electronic and lattice structural properties. To address this challenge, ULTRAIMAGE will introduce ground-breaking capabilities in microscopy of nanomaterials, providing access to their far-from-equilibrium states, with resolution on nanometer-to-Ångstrom length and femtosecond time scales. Key to this advance is the combination of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) to soft X-ray tabletop coherent light sources with a technique for coherent diffractive imaging called ptychography, in which multiple diffraction patterns from overlapping fields of view are processed by iterative algorithms to recover amplitude and phase images of sample and beam, separately. Nanoscale movies of the sample’s impulsive response, irradiated by ultrafast laser pulses, will be obtained with extremely high fidelity and in a non-destructive approach, with sub-20nm transverse resolution, 0.5Å axial precision, and ≈10fs temporal resolution. Each movie frame will be characterized by amplitude and phase images of the sample, with exquisite quantitative contrast to material composition, and to its topography. ULTRAIMAGE will introduce a world-class tabletop facility for ultrafast ptychography with coherent short-wavelength EUV light, which will enable the understanding with unprecedented detail of fundamental nanoscale behaviour, vital to a better design of energy-efficient next generation devices.

Keywords: characterisation,nanoparticle,superlattice,femtosecond,coherent diffractive imaging,ultrafast ptychography,euv and soft x ray light,structure property relations,collective modes
Marine Litter Prevention with Autonomous Water Drones (WasteShark)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Societal Challenges
Programme: Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy
Theme: Cross-cutting marine and maritime research
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call: Supporting SMEs efforts for the development - deployment and market replication of innovative solutions for blue growth (H2020-SMEINST-1-2016-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2018-02-01
End date: 2018-07-31
Duration (months): 6.0
Total project cost (EUR): 71429.0
EU funding (EUR): 50000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Marine litter costs the EU economy between €259 million and €695 million per year, affecting mainly the tourism and the fisheries sectors. Up to 90% of the plastic in the oceans comes from land, typically from rivers, canals, and ports. The problem must be then tackled at the source; once it reaches the ocean, 99% of the plastics eventually ends up on the sea bottom or inside marine life. To prevent marine litter, RanMarine has developed the WasteShark – a water drone that can autonomously clean up ports and inland waters. It has a carrying capacity of 550 litres and a buoyancy of 400kg, and multiple WasteSharks can coordinate to operate in self-organizing swarms. The WasteShark is also equipped with sensors that allow the drone to gather data about the environment while collecting garbage. The breakthrough of our product is its robustness, as it contains no moving parts apart from the standard thrusters, and its price, as it is an order of magnitude less expensive than existing alternatives. These characteristics have already convinced the Port of Rotterdam – the largest in Europe – to be our first paying customer after that a pilot concluded in Q1 2017 was positively evaluated. According to our estimates, thanks to the WasteShark (and related products) RanMarine will have an EIBTDA of over 2 million euros in 2020 and will employ 25 people by then. The WasteShark has been designed and built in the Netherlands by an international team of very experienced entrepreneurs, technologists, and business developers. Our goal is to make the WasteShark available commercially in Q3 2018. In order to be successful in this endeavor, we have to better assess the commercial potential of our innovation and refine our go-to-market strategy thanks to the SME Instrument Phase 1 feasibility study.

Keywords: marine litter,uavs,pet plastics
Hyperpolarised MR technologies and molecular probes as alternatives for conventional metal-containing contrast agents for MRI examinations (AlternativesToGd)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Future and Emerging Technologies (FET)
Theme: EIC Pathfinder
Destination: Novel ideas for radically new technologies
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Germany,Italy,Austria,Germany,Italy,Israel,France,Denmark,United Kingdom,United Kingdom
Call: FET-Open Challenging Current Thinking (H2020-FETOPEN-2018-2019-2020-01, 2019)
Start date: 2019-10-01
End date: 2023-09-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3065956.25
EU funding (EUR): 3065956.25
Participants: 10
Project status: SIGNED

Recently, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) recommended suspension and warning labels for Gadolinium (Gd)-bearing CAs (GBCA) used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This decision, although made in the absence of any clinical evidence, relates to potential major health concerns resulting from long-term accumulation of Gd containing species in patients’ bodies. This sends a clear message that we need to carefully consider the necessity of each contrast injection in individuals undergoing an MRI scan. However, for a number of diagnostic procedures, such as tumour characterisation, the use of a CA is often essential. The accumulation of Gd in different organs (including the brain) and GBCA-related diseases requires the scientific community to seek radically new alternatives. The AlternativesToGd vision is to identify and validate radically new compounds and technologies as alternatives to GBCAs. The new compounds and technologies developed in this proposal will be tested in animal models of disease and the most promising ones selected for further clinical development. The expected outcomes should radically impact the field, likely leading to a paradigm shift in MR-based diagnosis and thus being highly beneficial to society. The AlternativesToGd consortium will develop a new class of MRI CAs that will be metal-free, safe, and completely eliminated from the human body after the MRI exam. The agents will consist of small endogenous molecules, in which nuclear spins will be hyperpolarised to ensure high sensitivity to MR detection, even at very low doses. A major challenge and risk arises from the rapid decay of the hyperpolarised (HP) state. As enabling technologies, AlternativesToGd focuses on three leading and innovative hyperpolarisation techniques and on unique agents showing HP state lifetimes that are sufficiently long to enable diagnostic contrast-enhanced MRI approaches with so far unobtained sensitivity.

Keywords: new mri contrast agents,gadolinium free,hyperpolarised magnetic resonance imaging,perfusion and tissue retention,longitudinal relaxation time
Testing new hypotheses on the evolution of sex-related chromosomes (EvolSexChrom)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Panel description: Ecology, biodiversity, environmental change, evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, microbial ecology, marine biology, ecophysiology, theoretical developments and modelling
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2018-ADG, 2018)
Start date: 2019-10-01
End date: 2025-09-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The sex chromosomes of plants and animals often contain large non-recombining regions due to a stepwise cessation of recombination generating “evolutionary strata” of genetic differentiation. The reasons for the extension of recombination suppression beyond sex-determining genes remain unclear. Sexual antagonism, involving the linkage to sex-determining genes of alleles beneficial in only one sex, is the prevailing hypothesis, as this explanation is both theoretically plausible and attractive. However, decades of research have unearthed little evidence to support this hypothesis. Furthermore, I have shown that chromosomes involved in sexual compatibility in systems lacking male and female functions can nevertheless display a stepwise suppression of recombination beyond mating-compatibility genes. Thus, evolutionary strata can evolve without sexual antagonism. Alternative hypotheses, such as neutral rearrangements, epigenetic changes associated with transposable elements and the sheltering of deleterious alleles accumulating near non-recombining regions, must thus be seriously considered. I propose to use a synergic combination of different approaches and biological systems to refine and test these hypotheses, to broaden the theory of sex-related chromosome evolution, and, more generally, of the evolution of supergenes (linked allelic combinations). I will use mathematical modeling to test hypothesis plausibility and generate predictions. I will use comparative and population genomic approaches to test predictions, and an innovative experimental evolution approach with functional manipulations to assess the ability of the proposed mechanisms to generate strata. The EvolSexChrom project will challenge the current theory, opening up new avenues of research and potentially creating a paradigm shift in the dynamic research field focusing on the evolution of sex-related chromosomes and other supergenes, relevant to diverse traits and organisms.

Keywords: sex chromosomes,mating type evolution,supergene,recombination suppression,evolutionary,strata,chromosomal rearrangement,genomic decay,genomic analyses,microbial experiments,theoretical models,transposable elements,methylation,population genomics,fungi
Poplar Fiber Based Sustainable and Antibacterial Face Mask Filtration Media (Popmask)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Society and Enterprise panel
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Italy
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020, 2020)
Start date: 2021-05-01
End date: 2023-04-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 183473.28
EU funding (EUR): 183473.28
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Among top ten current N95 producers, only one of them is EU-origin company. Europe needs to act to develop sustainable face masks to lead the fabric filtration industry, which will be worth in excess of 2.7 billion Euros in 2024. Due to ongoing coronavirus pandemic, consuming billions of face masks around the globe resulted not only plastic pollution, but also created a shortage on the melt-blown polypropylene (PP) supply chain, which is the mainly used filtering medium. PP is a petroleum-based polymer and doesn’t have antibacterial activity. The ideal solution to this problem would be using a sustainable and antibacterial filtration media that can effectively filter ultra-small particles such as coronavirus itself. To address the challenge, I have formulated an innovative and interdisciplinary project based on my research experience to develop filtration media using sustainable and antibacterial poplar fibers that aligns with The European Green Deal action plan. After developing poplar webs, I will utilize Grado Zero Espace's (GZE), expertise to create commercial surgical masks and filtering facepiece respirators (FFP). The significance of developing Coronavirus-specific project is clearly emphasized in the European Research Area Corona Platform. Developing surgical masks and FFPs prototypes from a sustainable material not only contributes Sustainable Development Goal of EU, but also could lead higher-added value products, responding the global need for face masks in pandemic situations.

Keywords: fibre science,fiber science,textiles,nonwovens,textile technology,sustainable fibers
Thought Exhibition: The significance of Bruno Latour's art exhibition concept for his work and as a model for art institutions (THOUGHT EXHIBITION)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Standard European Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Social Sciences and Humanities
Countries involved: Denmark
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020, 2020)
Start date: 2022-09-01
End date: 2024-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 207312.0
EU funding (EUR): 207312.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The research project investigates the concept of “thought exhibition” (TE), a curatorial approach developed by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel during four exhibitions at ZKM | Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (Germany). Following Latour’s work in philosophy and science & technology studies (STS) the art exhibitions aim at challenging the dualistic mentality (nature/culture, object/subject, etc.) fostered by European modernity which is, according to Latour, at the heart of current crises such as climate change. TEs engage visitors in a “spatio-aesthetic thought experiment” by bringing them into a position where they can question modern preconceptions, such as the domination of culture over nature or the notion of objective distance towards phenomena, and encourage them to develop alternatives. The project will gain new insights into Latour’s work in philosophy and STS by demonstrating the significance of TEs for this work. It will also provide a conceptual framework for the role of the arts in facilitating engaging narratives on ecologically/socially critical issues. In particular, the project will investigate Latour’s concepts of “hybrids”, artefacts which cannot be put distinctively in categories of nature or culture, transgressing the dualistic distinctions, and of “compositionism”, a relational way of juxtaposing objects and actors in the exhibition space. The research will be carried out by reviewing published and, at the ZKM archive, unpublished material, by analysing ZKM visitor surveys and by conducting interviews with Latour, Weibel, co-curators and ZKM staff, all of whom have pledged to fully support the project. Despite the relevance of both Latour’s work and ZKM as a leading art museum, little research on the TE concept has been done so far. The project wants to thoroughly investigate this curatorial approach which builds on the aesthetic and participatory capacity of the arts to address crucial issues and to activate individuals for processes of change.

Keywords: dualisms critique of,climate change,transformative change,eurocentrism,curatorial studies,performativity of the arts,participatory art,art as forum,thought experiment,posthumanism