Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
BioAhead – an innovative optimization algorithm for amino acid chain analytics (BioAhead)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Germany
Call: Open Disruptive Innovation Scheme (H2020-SMEINST-1-2016-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2017-12-01
End date: 2018-05-31
Duration (months): 6.0
Total project cost (EUR): 71429.0
EU funding (EUR): 50000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Globosoft GmbH aims to optimize the drug development process of drug manufacturers, enabling faster and more efficient development of drugs in Europe and worldwide. For this purpose, Globosoft GmbH has developed the innovative optimization algorithm called BioAhead to optimize acid chain analysis, as part of the protein structure modeling field. The innovation will create growth in terms of income and new job creation and have a high return on investment. The proposed model has a high potential for a fast up-take by the market, considering the savings in time and money and also a cloud technology that will make the model easy-to-use in any country. BioAhead adequately addresses issues related to the society. With faster and more accurate drug development processes, the society in Europe and world-wide can benefit from low- priced medicines, faster drug development and highly specialized medicines, which are currently too expensive for economic development.

Keywords: algorithm molecular biology amino acid
Extracellular vesicles’ transcriptomics: unravelling the role of short non-coding RNAs in autoimmunity (EXAUTOIMMUNE)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Reintegration panel
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Greece
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2019, 2019)
Start date: 2020-10-01
End date: 2022-09-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 165085.44
EU funding (EUR): 165085.44
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

It is estimated that over 36 million Europeans suffer from an autoimmune disease (AID) and according to the European League against Rheumatism one third of people of all ages are affected at some point during their lifetime. AIDs are a significant clinical problem, however, most of the current therapies target the terminal phase of inflammation and do not suppress the fundamental events responsible for the initiation of the autoimmune process. The EXAUTOIMMUNE project will use Sjögren’s syndrome (SS), one of the most common AIDs, as a model to create innovating strategies for dissecting the fundamental processes involved in the initiation of the autoimmune response. By using state-of-the-art nanotechnology we will characterize the extracellular vesicles (EV) secreted by the salivary gland epithelial cells, the main target of autoimmune responses in SS, and test their immunoregulatory properties. Then, we will apply next-generation sequencing to analyze the EVs’ RNA content and identify candidate RNA molecules that can be functionally tested for disruption of autoimmune processes. Linking EVs and extracellular RNA to autoimmunity is a fundamental theme of the current knowledge. The results of the proposed research will substantially add to the delineation of the biological relevance of extracellular RNA in modulating the regulatory mechanisms leading to autoimmunity. This study will form the foundation for transitioning from human biology to a mouse model, where the potential therapeutic value of EV and/or RNA-targeting will be tested, thus opening the best career opportunities for the applicant as a leader in this newly emerging landscape. Spearheading this research using next-generation tools and ideas will produce long-term synergies and will define EU and ERA as world leaders in the battle against AID. Collectively, the project activities will open the best career opportunities for the candidate, while advancing EU’s scientific competitiveness and innovation.

Keywords: autoimmunity,sjogren s syndrome,transcriptomics
A network for dynamic WEarable Applications with pRivacy constraints (A-WEAR)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Innovative Training Networks (ITN)-European Joint Doctorates
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Spain,Italy,Spain,Spain,Italy,Romania,Finland,Finland,Czechia
Call: Innovative Training Networks (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2018, 2018)
Start date: 2019-01-01
End date: 2023-06-30
Duration (months): 54.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3762325.8
EU funding (EUR): 3762325.8000000003
Participants: 18
Project status: SIGNED

The emerging market of wearables is expected to grow exponentially in the near future, driven by the sales increase of smart clothes, watches, and eyeglasses. The future wearables are likely to be heterogeneous, operating on batteries, sun power or human motion, and endowed with smart functions. They will co-operate in a decentralized manner with each other and will be able to reach various interconnected software and applications. The main stream wearable-based architecture has been applied so far in wellbeing industries, such as eHealth or ambient assisted living, which might also reduce the costs for care and guarantee a healthy independent live in the forthcoming older society. As the digitalisation and data-based economy are growing, the exploitation potential of the wearables can easily be expected to increase. Key wearables stakeholder groups in the future are also smart cities, comprising intelligent building industry and infrastructure, energy-efficient smart grid sector, public e-Services, and smart transport. Motivated by the opportunities that next-generation wearable intelligence is expected to provide, the mission of A-WEAR action is to cross-disciplinarily create new architectures, open-source software and frameworks for dynamic wearable ecosystems, with distributed localization and privacy constraints. We aim at building new joint/double European doctoral programmes to train a new generation of young researchers in order to be aware of, to cope with, and to disseminate to a large audience the vulnerabilities and the corresponding solutions of the communication and positioning through wearables. The impact of A-WEAR will be to enhance the future social well-being, to contribute to an easy living, effective and enjoyable work, and to offer new solutions to the challenges of violation of privacy by communication and positioning through wearables and to the need of applying the right of the ownership to one’s data.

Keywords: wearables,dynamic architectures,wireless positioning,low cost low latency,ehealth,industrial applications,edge and cloud computing,social aware discovery,user privacy,cryptography
Driven by mutualists: how declines in pollinators impact plant communities and ecosystem functioning (DrivenByPollinators)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator 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: Sweden
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2018-COG, 2018)
Start date: 2019-09-01
End date: 2024-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1998842.0
EU funding (EUR): 1998842.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Pollinator declines in response to land-use intensification have raised concern about the persistence of plant species dependent on insect pollination, in particular by bees, for their reproduction. Recent empirical studies show that reduced pollinator abundance decreases densities of seedlings of insect-pollinated plants and thereby changes the composition of grassland plant communities. Cascading effects on ecosystem functioning and associated organisms are expected, but to which extent and under which conditions this is the case is yet unexplored. Here, I propose a bold, multi-year, landscape-scale experimental assessment of the extent of pollinator-driven plant community changes, their consequences for associated organisms and important ecosystem functions, and their likely contingency on other factors (soil fertility, herbivory). Specifically I will: (1) Set up a network of long-term research plots in landscapes differing in pollinator abundance to measure the changes in plant reproduction over successive years, and assessing experimentally how herbivory and soil fertility mediate these effects. (2) Explore the individual processes linking pollinators, plant communities and ecosystem functioning using long-term experiments controlling pollinator, herbivore and nutrient availability, focusing on a sample of plant species covering both the dominant species and a diversity of functional traits. (3) Assess the context-dependence of pollinator-mediated plant community determination by building and applying process-based models based on observational and experimental data, and combine with existing spatially-explicit pollinator models to demonstrate the applicability to assess agri-environmental measures. This powerful blend of complementary approaches will for the first time shed light on the cornerstone role of this major mutualism in maintaining diverse communities and the functions they support, and pinpoint the risks threatening them and the need for mitigation.

Keywords: pollination
Boosting the European Innovative Satellite Technologies with In-Orbit Demonstrations (GOTOFLY)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Space
Theme: Enabling European competitiveness, non-dependence and innovation of the European space sector
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Spain,Italy,Belgium,France,France
Call: In-Orbit demonstration/Validation (IOD/IOV) (H2020-COMPET-2014, 2014)
Start date: 2015-01-01
End date: 2016-06-30
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 459287.5
EU funding (EUR): 459287.5
Participants: 5
Project status: CLOSED

GOTOFLY! project aims first at building a wide portfolio of solutions and opportunities for the In-Orbit Demonstration and Validation of European satellite technologies and products, that are under development in Europe with the support of the EU, ESA, and national Space Agencies. Then we will design technically and programmatically several IOD/IOV missions from the portfolio, suitable to the Horizon 2020 context. Lastly, the GOTOFLY! project will promote its results among the stakeholders of the European Space sector. . Therefore, the GOTOFLY! project gathers a teams of 5 enterprises of the European Space industry coming from 4 different countries: - 3 national branches of Thales Alenia Space (TAS) in France, Italy and Spain. TAS is a major satellites manufacturer and a leading player in the field of the Space R&D. It knows accurately the constraints for launching various satellites, then in-flight monitoring payload parts - Sea & Space Exploration in Belgium, an independent expert in analysing market trends and opportunities of the IC Technologies and satellite communication business - NovaNano, a French SME developing IOD/IOV low-cost solutions based on nanosatellites. . As a coordination action within H2020 programme, the GOTOFLY! Project proposes: - to set-up a panorama of technologies and products that are of high interest for supporting new satcom applications & services, and for strengthening the competiveness and independence of the European space Industry. - to catalogue the potentials IOD/IOV ‘carriers’ able to host these technologies & products and to identify the launch opportunities: from nanosatellites to big GEO ones (which can merge a commercial mission with an experimental payload as a passenger) - to select a set of IOD/IOV scenarios from the portfolio and to design these IOV/IOD missions on both technical and programmatic aspects, including the funding strategy. - and finally to recommend to Europe the best IOD/IOV for next H2020 phases.

Keywords: innovative and efficient payload technologies,big and small satellite platforms,publicprivate partnership,scenarios for in orbit validation
The Formation of the First Galaxies and Reionization with the James Webb Space Telescope (EPOCHS)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Universe sciences
Panel description: Astro-physics/-chemistry/-biology; solar system; planetary systems; stellar, galactic and extragalactic astronomy; cosmology; space sciences; astronomical instrumentation and data
Countries involved: United Kingdom,United Kingdom
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2017-ADG, 2017)
Start date: 2020-05-01
End date: 2025-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1951138.0
EU funding (EUR): 1951138.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Within the first few hundred million years after the Big-Bang the first galaxies and stars were born. Sometime soon after, these first objects produced enough energetic photons to reionization the neutral gas in the universe. This frontier of early galaxy assembly has not yet been observed, but will be uncovered by deep imaging and spectroscopy taken with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Key problems include: how the very first galaxies were assembled, and evolved, in their first few Gyr, and the history of reionization. With this ERC funded EPOCHS project I will lead a major effort to investigate these questions using JWST GTO time discovering galaxies before, during, and after the epoch of reionization. This proposal has three interconnected and complementary themes: (i) Identifying the first galaxies and characterizing their UV luminosities, stellar masses, and star formation rates at 7<z<12. JWST imaging and spectroscopy will allow us to make significant progress beyond the current state of the art, and to use these measures to test models of the earliest galaxy assembly. (ii) Using these galaxies we will map the process of reionization: the sources of it, and the time-scale of its onset and duration. Using new diagnostics we will address uncertainties that currently plague this calculation, including escape fractions and the number of ionizing photons, using UV emission lines, spectral shapes, and measuring hardness ratios with radiative transfer models. (iii) We will measure the rest-frame optical structures of galaxies at 3<z<7 to reveal the formation modes of galaxies when they assembled their first masses and structures. We will determine how and when compact galaxies, mergers, dissipative formation in star forming disks, and the formation of bulges and disks are occurring. This includes measuring the formation history of internal components in 3<z<7 galaxies, allowing us to examine how quenching is occurring ‘inside-out’ or ‘outside-in’.
TARGETED ENGINEERING OF STONE FRUIT TREE GENOMES FOR RESISTANCE TO SHARKA (TESS)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Research and innovation staff exchange
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Italy,France,Chile
Call: Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2018-05-01
End date: 2023-10-31
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 193500.0
EU funding (EUR): 193500.0
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

Plant viruses cause an estimated 50 billion € loss worldwide per year. Viral diseases represent one of the most limiting factors in European crop production having negative effects on the quantity and quality of foodstuffs. The recent identification of plant factors required for virus infection, together with the development of functional genomic tools in several economically important crops, offer novel opportunities to protect crop plants against viral diseases. The scope of TESS is to capitalize on the latest biotechnological tools in order to manipulate the plant/virus interactions towards non-host resistance and to match the research outputs with fruit industry and breeding applications. TESS benefits from multidisciplinary research teams involving genomics, tissue culture, molecular biology, virology and plant breeding. It focuses on Prunus species for stone fruit trees. The originality of TESS is to test the generic mode of interference of plant viruses with their host during the infection and use this information to implement complex and durable resistance in perennial fruit tree species.

Keywords: genome editing,stone fruit trees,rapid cycling breeding,resistance to virus
Direct cell reprogramming therapy in myocardial regeneration through an engineered multifunctional platform integrating biochemical instructive cues (BIORECAR)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Products and processes engineering
Panel description: Product and process design, chemical, civil, environmental, mechanical, vehicle engineering, energy processes and relevant computational methods
Countries involved: Italy,Italy
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2017-COG, 2017)
Start date: 2018-07-01
End date: 2024-12-31
Duration (months): 78.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2000000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1875000.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

In BIORECAR I will develop a new breakthrough multifunctional biomaterial-based platform for myocardial regeneration after myocardial infarction, provided with biochemical cues able to enhance the direct reprogramming of human cardiac fibroblasts into functional cardiomyocytes. My expertise in bioartificial materials and biomimetic scaffolds and the versatile chemistry of polyurethanes will be the key elements to achieve a significant knowledge and technological advancement in cell reprogramming therapy, opening the way to the future translation of the therapy into the clinics. I will implement this advanced approach through the design of a novel 3D in vitro tissue-engineered model of human cardiac fibrotic tissue, as a tool for testing and validation, to maximise research efforts and reduce animal tests. I will adapt novel nanomedicine approaches I have recently developed for drug release to design innovative cell-friendly and efficient polyurethane nanoparticles for targeted reprogramming of cardiac fibroblasts. I will design an injectable bioartificial hydrogel based on a blend of a thermosensitive polyurethane and a natural component selected among a novel cell-secreted natural polymer mixture (“biomatrix”) recapitulating the complexity of cardiac extracellular matrix or one of its main protein constituents. Such multifunctional hydrogel will deliver in situ agents stimulating recruitment of cardiac fibroblasts together with the nanoparticles loaded with reprogramming therapeutics, and will provide biochemical signalling to stimulate efficient conversion of fibroblasts into mature cardiomyocytes. First-in-field biomaterials-based innovations introduced by BIORECAR will enable more effective regeneration of functional myocardial tissue respect to state-of-the art approaches. BIORECAR innovation is multidisciplinary in nature and will be accelerated towards future clinical translation through my clinical, scientific and industrial collaborations.

Keywords: bioartificial materials,biomimetic scaffolds,cell direct reprogramming,hydrogels,nanoparticles for targeted release
Paleovirology, the evolutionary dynamics of viral cross-species transmissions, and the consequences of virus-host gene exchange (PALVIREVOL)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator 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: United Kingdom
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2020-COG, 2020)
Start date: 2021-10-01
End date: 2026-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999805.0
EU funding (EUR): 1999805.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Viruses are ubiquitous, obligate intracellular parasites that have had a pervasive influence on the evolutionary history of life. Despite being extensively studied due to their role in disease, very little is known about their long-term evolution, since they do not form a geological fossil record. The new field of paleovirology is the study of ancient viruses, which in the genomic age has been facilitated by discoveries of endogenous viral elements (EVEs). EVEs are the remnants of viruses that have heritably integrated into the genomes of their hosts and we were the first to discover that viruses of all genome types can endogenise. This genomic fossil record contains information about viral/host interactions that would be impossible to recover from contemporary viral sequences. We will develop novel methodologies to exploit this data source in order to quantify how viral transmission dynamics vary between organisms and over time, and to identify the factors that determine this. While most EVEs are non-functional relics, they are sometimes captured and repurposed by their hosts to serve a beneficial function as antiviral genes. These remarkable examples indicate an important role for virus to host gene flow in evolution, and we will determine the nature and extent of this phenomenon. This gene exchange is mirrored in viruses that capture host genes to evade immune responses. We will integrate bioinformatics, evolutionary, and experimental techniques, to elucidate the evolutionary processes underlying virus-host gene flow in both directions, and to determine the molecular features that impact host immunity and viral pathogenicity. Now is the time to pursue this research, given the unprecedented availability of genomic data and the emergence of paleovirology. Our results will greatly improve our understanding of viral cross-species transmission, as well as the role of gene flow on the evolutionary arms race between viruses and their hosts over geological timescales.

Keywords: paleovirology,virus,host gene exchange