Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Development of small molecule inhibitors of circulating tumor cell clusters (Cluster-Buster)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept 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: Switzerland
Call: ERC Proof of Concept Grant (ERC-2018-PoC, 2018)
Start date: 2019-05-01
End date: 2020-10-31
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Despite the great progress that has been made in treating cancer, metastasis remains incurable. Metastasis accounts for 8 million deaths per year worldwide and no agents are currently available to prevent the metastatic spread of cancer. The metastatic process begins with cancer cells leaving the primary tumor site and entering the blood circulation. In circulation, cancer cells are defined as circulating tumor cells (CTCs), and are typically found in the form of single CTCs or small CTC aggregates (CTC clusters). Upon dissemination and survival into distant organs, cancer cells give rise to proliferating metastatic lesions, which in turn can shed other CTCs and form additional metastases. While virtually all oncology-related drugs aim to kill cancer cells within a tumor, no drugs are available to target metastatic cells in circulation. As a consequence, no drugs are available to block or prevent the metastatic cascade. We recently discovered that CTC clusters are exceptionally efficient metastatic precursors, capable to initiate a metastasis 50-times better than single CTCs. Within our ERC Starting Grant Project Holding-Hands, through a screen with 2’456 FDA-approved compounds, we discovered those that enable the disaggregation of CTC clusters in breast cancer mouse models and consequently, lead to metastasis suppression. This exciting new discovery implies that targeting CTC clusters is now feasible, and that this approach is likely to delay or prevent metastasis formation in cancer patients. Thus, within this Proof of Concept application, we aim to screen and patent additional cluster-targeting compounds with higher efficacy and better safety profile, to establish a new company whose aim is to commercialize cluster-targeting molecules, and to prepare for clinical trials.

Keywords: circulating tumor cell clusters,cell cell junctions,signaling,drug screening
How is the external climatic forcing affected by the Earth’s magnetic field? (CLIMAGNET)

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: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: Spain
Call: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF-EF) (H2020-MSCA-IF-2014, 2014)
Start date: 2016-02-01
End date: 2018-01-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 158121.6
EU funding (EUR): 158121.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The rate of production of cosmogenic isotopes plays an important role in our understanding of past climate variability since they provide information about the solar irradiance related to the Sun’s magnetic field. Having reliable information about past changes in solar irradiance is important for the development of climate model simulations driven by reconstructions of past natural and anthropogenic forcings. One of the sources of uncertainty that affect reconstructions of solar variability is that not only the influence of the solar magnetic field is recorded by the radionuclides; the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field also contributes to modulate the rate of isotope productions. In this context, an appropriate knowledge of the past global geomagnetic field variations is crucial to define the total solar irradiance and hence, to improve reconstructions of external forcing. The past evolution of the geomagnetic field can be recovered from rock samples. The main differences between model predictions are related with the filter applied to the palaeomagnetic data. Up to now, these filters rejected the data according to the measurement and age uncertainties. However, this procedure does not consider the quality of the laboratory protocol or the number of specimens, and hence geomagnetic field predictions might be affected by some unreliable data. Currently, the non-appropriate application of these filters generates spurious variations in the geomagnetic model predictions and these biases are transferred to the reconstruction of the solar variability and consequently to the climatic model simulations. The CLIMAGNET project is aimed to resolve this challenge in two scopes: a) the construction of a global geomagnetic model for the last eight millennia using an appropriate weighting scheme of the palaeomagnetic data; b) the study of the relation between the geomagnetic model predictions and the production rate of cosmogenic isotopes using novel approaches.

Keywords: geomagnetic field model,cosmogenic isotopes,solar forcing,climatic reconstruction,bayesian statistics,transfer entropy
MONOMA: B2B Feasibility Study (Monoma)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Societal Challenges
Programme: Health, demographic change and wellbeing
Theme: Active ageing and self-management of health
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: Accelerating market introduction of ICT solutions for Health, Well-Being and Ageing Well (H2020-SMEINST-1-2016-2017, 2016)
Start date: 2016-08-01
End date: 2017-01-31
Duration (months): 6.0
Total project cost (EUR): 71429.0
EU funding (EUR): 50000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Monoma is a patent-pending cloud-based Software as a service (SaaS) solution integrating (i) modular, sensor based controllers (Hardware) and (ii) a platform with several therapy modules (Software), which (iii) collects and aggregates data insights to train people that have moderate-to-severe cases of Autism and other SEN. Monoma is designed to help users exercise regularly both cognitively and physically by triggering users’ creativity and engagement through games, music making and gamified training exercises. It is the only ergonomically accessible input device that is (i) fully customisable due to its bidirectional communication capacity, enabling new interaction possibilities and also adaptability to each end-user, (ii) that offers interoperability possibilities with other hardware and programmes enabling scalability and affordability, and (iii) collecting data insights to help therapists and educators assess the evolution of users’ capacities. The system has been developed by Filisia Interfaces, a UK-based company incorporated in 2014. Filisia’s customers are Therapist and Educators working in Special Schools, Therapy Centres and Care Homes. The company aims to penetrate its UK home market, scale up, and expand in Germany and the Netherlands, which together count for more than 649,342 educators and occupational, physical and music therapists who work in 160,000 institutions that cater for the needs of 3,441,400 people with SEN. Filisia aspires to become a key service provider, by making Monoma the main solution to cater for neuromuscular and cognitive impairments in the European and US markets, starting off with the UK, German and Dutch markets. By taking an average of only 2 solutions needed per centre, at its current pricing point (€450 for the device and €450 for the annual subscription), Monoma’s total addressable market for these 3 countries in 2016 is over €72M for the device, and €72M in recurrent annual subscriptions (a total of €144M).

Keywords: saas,therapy module,autism,ergonomics,bidirectional communication,cognitive recovery
Moduli Spaces, Manifolds and Arithmetic (MSMA)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Mathematics
Panel description: All areas of mathematics, pure and applied, plus mathematical foundations of computer science, mathematical physics and statistics
Countries involved: Denmark
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2015-CoG, 2015)
Start date: 2016-06-01
End date: 2022-05-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1991061.0
EU funding (EUR): 1991061.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This proposal concerns the application of homotopy theoretic methods to multiple questions of geometric nature, and in particular the study of moduli spaces. Firmly based in topology, the research proposed here is strongly motivated by applications and potential applications to differential geometry, algebraic geometry and especially number theory. Any “moduli space” parametrizes how certain objects may vary in families. The moduli spaces of manifolds parametrize how smooth manifolds may vary in families (smooth fiber bundles), and the representation varieties studied in the second major component parametrize how linear representations of a group may vary in algebraic families. The homotopy theoretic study of moduli spaces of manifolds has seen spectacular successes in the last 15 years, kickstarted by a theorem of Madsen and Weiss concerning the topology of moduli spaces of 2-dimensional manifolds. Very recently, anongoing collaboration between O. Randal-Williams and myself promises to establish analoguous results for manifolds of higher dimension. If funded, the research proposed here will bring this research program to a point where all major results about surface moduli spaces have proven analogues for manifolds of higher dimension. The second major component of this proposal has strong number-theoretic origins, but is essentially homotopy theoretic. It concerns the study of universal deformations of representations of (Galois) groups. If funded, the research in this component of the proposal, joint with Akshay Venkatesh, will develop derived (simplicial) deformation rings. Classical deformation rings have had spectacular applications in number theory (starting with Wiles’ work) and we also propose to begin the study of applications ofderived deformation rings. Finally, the proposal contains smaller or more speculative projects, and points out many questions which might be suitable for the Ph.D.-students and postdocs also applied for in this proposal.

Keywords: manifolds,moduli spaces,homological stability,representation varieties,universal deformations
Robotic Manipulation for Nuclear Sort and Segregation (RoMaNS)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Theme: Advanced interfaces and robots: Robotics and smart spaces
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Partnership: Robotics SPARC (cPPP)
Countries involved: Germany,France,France,United Kingdom,United Kingdom
Call: Robotics (H2020-ICT-2014-1, 2014)
Start date: 2015-05-01
End date: 2018-10-31
Duration (months): 42.0
Total project cost (EUR): 6377521.25
EU funding (EUR): 6377521.0
Participants: 6
Project status: CLOSED

The RoMaNS (Robotic Manipulation for Nuclear Sort and Segregation) project will advance the state of the art in mixed autonomy for tele-manipulation, to solve a challenging and safety-critical “sort and segregate” industrial problem, driven by urgent market and societal needs. Cleaning up the past half century of nuclear waste, in the UK alone (mostly at the Sellafield site), represents the largest environmental remediation project in the whole of Europe. Most EU countries face related challenges. Nuclear waste must be “sorted and segregated”, so that low-level waste is placed in low-level storage containers, rather than occupying extremely expensive and resource intensive high-level storage containers and facilities. Many older nuclear sites (>60 years in UK) contain large numbers of legacy storage containers, some of which have contents of mixed contamination levels, and sometimes unknown contents. Several million of these legacy waste containers must now be cut open, investigated, and their contents sorted. This can only be done remotely using robots, because of the high levels of radioactive material. Current state-of-the-art practice in the industry, consists of simple tele-operation (e.g. by joystick or teach-pendant). Such an approach is not viable in the long-term, because it is prohibitively slow for processing the vast quantity of material required. The project will: 1) Develop novel hardware and software solutions for advanced bi-lateral master-slave tele-operation. 2) Develop advanced autonomy methods for highly adaptive automatic grasping and manipulation actions. 3) Combine autonomy and tele-operation methods using state-of-the-art understanding of mixed initiative planning, variable autonomy and shared control approaches. 4) Deliver a TRL 6 demonstration in an industrial plant-representative environment at the UK National Nuclear Lab Workington test facility.

Keywords: grasping,manipulation,vision,variable autonomy,shared control,arm and hand design
Statistics of Exotic Fractional Hall States (ANYONIC)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Condensed matter physics
Panel description: Structure, electronic properties, fluids, nanosciences, biological physics
Countries involved: Israel
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2018-ADG, 2018)
Start date: 2019-05-01
End date: 2025-04-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1801094.0
EU funding (EUR): 1801094.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Since their discovery, Quantum Hall Effects have unfolded intriguing avenues of research, exhibiting a multitude of unexpected exotic states: accurate quantized conductance states; particle-like and hole-conjugate fractional states; counter-propagating charge and neutral edge modes; and fractionally charged quasiparticles - abelian and (predicted) non-abelian. Since the sought-after anyonic statistics of fractional states is yet to be verified, I propose to launch a thorough search for it employing new means. I believe that our studies will serve the expanding field of the emerging family of topological materials. Our on-going attempts to observe quasiparticles (qp’s) interference, in order to uncover their exchange statistics (under ERC), taught us that spontaneous, non-topological, ‘neutral edge modes’ are the main culprit responsible for qp’s dephasing. In an effort to quench the neutral modes, we plan to develop a new class of micro-size interferometers, based on synthetically engineered fractional modes. Flowing away from the fixed physical edge, their local environment can be controlled, making it less hospitable for the neutral modes. Having at hand our synthetized helical-type fractional modes, it is highly tempting to employ them to form localize para-fermions, which will extend the family of exotic states. This can be done by proximitizing them to a superconductor, or gapping them via inter-mode coupling. The less familiar thermal conductance measurements, which we recently developed (under ERC), will be applied throughout our work to identify ‘topological orders’ of exotic states; namely, distinguishing between abelian and non-abelian fractional states. The proposal is based on an intensive and continuous MBE effort, aimed at developing extremely high purity, GaAs based, structures. Among them, structures that support our new synthetic modes that are amenable to manipulation, and others that host rare exotic states, such as v=5/2, 12/5, 19/8, and 35/16.

Keywords: abelian and non abelian states in fqhe,interference of quasiparticles,exchange statistics,thermal conductance of fractional states
greenREF - Development of reference standards for the analysis of chlorinated paraffins (greenREF)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Innovation in SMEs
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Norway
Call: European SME innovation Associate - pilot (H2020-INNOSUP-2020-02, 2020)
Start date: 2021-01-01
End date: 2021-12-31
Duration (months): 12.0
Total project cost (EUR): 173605.36
EU funding (EUR): 121523.75
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Chlorinated Paraffins (CP) are considered as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP). Although the short chain CPs (SCCPs) have been banned on a global level the production of CPs is alarmingly large (2m tons/yr.). Being persistent, CPs stay in the environment for decades. Their greatest threats are their high potential for bioaccumulation and carcinogenic potential to humans and other mammals. Unfortunately, CPs are found in a great deal of applications, including plasticizers, flame retardants and metal working fluids, causing potential exposure. A significant challenge concerning CPs is the considerable lack of effective and generally accepted reference standards, which means that the identification and quantification of CPs are currently sub-standard. These deficient analytical methods do not provide the needed precision for meaningful analysis and monitoring of CP presence in e.g. water, soil and foodstuff. At Chiron we are experts in the preparation of standards for chemical and biological analysis and in the development of 13C-labelled Certified Reference Materials (CRM), especially focussed on forensic toxicology and biomarkers for various applications (e.g. environmental and geochemical analysis). We wish to use our knowledgebase to develop a CP CRM production platform which includes pure native standards, 13C labelled CPs, and new analysis methods for the quantification of CPs. This will have considerable impact within environmental toxicology by empowering analysts to provide detailed and meaningful analyses of CP presence in the environment, allowing for greater monitoring and control. Since the specific CP expertise does not currently exist in-house, Chiron will need to employ an Innovation Associate through the Innovation Associate Program, who with his/her capabilities within organic chemistry, chemical synthesis and CPs will be of essence to the R&D activities associated with the development of these new CRMs and the associated production platforms.

Keywords: organic chemistry,chemical synthesis,chlorinated paraffins,certified reference materials
Next Generation Science Challenges Using Digital and Social Media to Make Science Education and Careers Attractive for Young People (SciChallenge)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Science with and for Society
Programme: Make scientific and technological careers attractive to young students, and forster sustainable interaction between schools, research institutions, industry and civil society organisations
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Austria,Cyprus,Belgium,Sweden,Slovenia,Hungary,Czechia,United Kingdom
Call: Innovative ways to make science education and scientific careers attractive to young people (H2020-SEAC-2014-1, 2014)
Start date: 2015-09-01
End date: 2017-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1342844.0
EU funding (EUR): 1342844.0
Participants: 9
Project status: CLOSED

Science education is tremendous in shaping the present and future of modern societies. Thus, the EU needs all its talents to increase creativity and competitiveness. Especially young boys and girls have to be engaged to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). However, statistics still show that enrolment rates in STEM-based degree programs are low and will lead to a workforce problem in industries, especially in many of the new member countries. The SciChallenge project focuses on developing novel concepts to actively integrate young boys and girls in science education using a contest-based approach to self-produced digital education materials from young people for young people. Driven by inspirational topic sheets, guides and toolkits created through this project and distributed by partner schools, teachers, and other youth-oriented institutions, contestants (individuals or groups) between the ages of 10 to 20 will generate creative digital materials (videos, slides, or infographics). The initiative will broadcast and distribute content over various social media channels and aggregated on a modern SciChallenge Web Platform (www.scichallenge.eu) to generate wide reaching awareness and promotion. Winning submissions will receive prizes funded by science-oriented industry and stakeholders. Intelligent cross-sectoral positioning of various awareness modules on the SciChallenge Open Information Hub will increase awareness on science careers and open opportunities for youngsters on internships or taster days in STEM through the strong involvement of related organisations and industries. Additionally aggregated information on science events (slams, nights, festivals etc.) is shared. With this multi-level approach, SciChallenge will boost the attractiveness of science education and careers among young girls and boys leading to more public engagement in science, economic prosperity and global competitiveness on a pan-European level.

Keywords: challenge,award,science,technology,engineering,math stem