Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Very fast Imaging by Broadband coherent RAman (VIBRA)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Fundamental constituents of matter
Panel description: Particle, nuclear, plasma, atomic, molecular, gas, and optical physics
Countries involved: Italy
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2014-CoG, 2014)
Start date: 2015-06-01
End date: 2020-05-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1822500.0
EU funding (EUR): 1822500.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The VIBRA project aims at developing an innovative microscope for real-time non-invasive imaging of cells and tissues, which promises to have a revolutionary impact on several fields of biology and medicine. Chemically specific vibrational signatures of molecules enable their direct structural characterization. Reliable and quantitative endogenous bio-markers can be established, e.g., to follow cell differentiation and to identify crucial properties of tissues (malignant vs benign phenotype of a tumour). In this way neoplasms can be located and their borders with normal tissue traced for surgery. Spontaneous Raman spectroscopy demonstrated this capability, but it is intrinsically too slow for imaging. Coherent Raman microscopy, on the other hand, can reach extremely high speed (up to the video rate) but at the expense of poor chemical selectivity, being limited to a single vibrational frequency. The ground-breaking goal of VIBRA is to combine the most detailed molecular information over the entire vibrational spectrum with the highest acquisition speed. The PI will develop a complete coherent Raman microscope for near-video-rate broadband vibrational imaging. This high risk/high gain goal will be achieved by the combination of four key developments: improved pulsed laser source; optimized non-linear interaction, enhancing the signal; increase in acquisition speed, thanks to innovative spectrometers; parallel on-board data processing. In the final application phase, the VIBRA project will validate the performances of the novel vibrational imaging system studying two important bio-medical problems: cancerous cell differentiation and detection of neuronal tumours. This will pave the way towards future “virtual histopathology”: intraoperative non-invasive evaluation of cancerous tissue. My vision is to allow researchers and doctors without a specific knowledge in lasers and optics to routinely visualize functional properties of cells and tissues in vivo.

Keywords: biomedical imaging,coherent raman spectroscopy,microscopy,femtosecond laser pulses,coherent anti stokes raman scattering,stimulated raman scattering
Immunomodulatory effects of sustained pantethine release in inflammatory diseases (IMPEDE)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Italy
Call: ERC Proof of Concept Grant (ERC-2015-PoC, 2015)
Start date: 2016-02-01
End date: 2017-07-31
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and inflammation-associated brain diseases including Alzheimer's disease (AD) globally make up a €45B market and cost society close to €648B. The huge number of patients with these diseases causes an enormous socioeconomic burden. Currently, MS, AD and RA affect 120M people worldwide. There is no cure for AD and treatments for autoimmune diseases are not fully effective and reducing the inflammatory component in these diseases is a key strategy. As a result of our ERC StG NEUROTRAFFICKING we found that a natural molecule, which is Coenzyme A precursor (CoAP), modulates leukocyte trafficking and has anti-inflammatory properties that are, however, limited in effectiveness due to fast breakdown in the gut. Our preliminary data demonstrate that derivatives of CoAP hydrolysis are devoid of antiinflammatory effects and that intact CoAP is required for its therapeutic effect in mouse models of MS and AD. The goal of IMPEDE is to develop a proprietary formulation of CoAP that protects it from hydrolysis and its disulphide bonds from degradation. This provides a novel and highly promising therapeutic approach for the inflammatory diseases, either for combination or stand-alone treatment. A patent application for this novel CoAP formulation has been filed. Subsequent steps will be taken in IMPEDE to generate and validate a more effective product through improved formulation and to prepare further regulatory and IP strategies, design a business strategy and perform market research. Overall, IMPEDE offers a rapid valorisation of the ERC StG grant on one hand and of the novel CoAP formulation on the other hand. It will generate a novel CoAP formulation with high therapeutic potential in autoimmune diseases and other inflammatory diseases.

Keywords: immune modulation,pantethine,immunometabolism,leukocyte trafficking,inflammatory diseases,multiple sclerosis
Multiscale Modelling of Dissolutive Wetting (MMDWET)

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: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020, 2020)
Start date: 2022-03-01
End date: 2024-02-29
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 224933.76
EU funding (EUR): 224933.76
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

A moving contact line (MCL) is a moving line of intersection between a fluid/fluid interface and a solid wall. MCLs are central to a wide range of flows in nature and industry, ranging from surface coating, spray cooling, displacement of oil by CO2, to the recent development of 3D printing, microreactors, and nanotechnology. However, the modelling of MCLs has been a classical challenge. In particular, when the solid phase can dissolve into the wetting fluids, e.g., in soldering, formation of alloys and manufacturing of composite materials, there are still a few fundamental challenges which have handicapped the development of predictive computational models. This fellowship project will address those challenges and it has three objectives: (1) to develop a new computational model for 3D direct numerical simulation (DNS) of MCLs on dissolvable solid surfaces, covering both inertial- and diffusion-dominant dissolutive wetting regimes, and resolving nanometer length scales; (2) to develop a novel experimental method using tapping mode atomic force microscopy to directly measure, for the first time of the world, the dynamic contact angle and interface profiles within tens to hundreds of nanometers near the dynamic dissolutive wetting line, and to formulate a theory relating the dynamic contact angle and interface profiles to system parameters; (3) to formulate a reduced-order macroscale computational model which can save computational effort by at least nine orders of magnitude compared with DNS models in numerical simulation of dissolutive wetting. The project will lead to a step change in our modelling and understanding of dissolutive wetting. It will enable accurate and affordable simulations which will greatly benefit design and optimization in a vast range of industrial applications.

Keywords: dynamic wetting,dissolution,moving contact lines,multiscale experiments,modelling
INTEGRATION AND PROPAGATION OF IMMUNOLOGICAL SIGNALS DURING CANCER AND INFECTION (ENLIGHTEN)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Panel description: The immune system, related disorders and their mechanisms, biology of infectious agents and infection, biological basis of prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, innovative immunological tools and approaches, including therapies
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2016-ADG, 2016)
Start date: 2018-01-01
End date: 2023-12-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2499994.0
EU funding (EUR): 2499994.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The immune system uses both short- and long-range communication mechanisms to mount the coordinated and sophisticated cellular responses required to control microbial infections or fight tumors. Yet, our understanding of how immunological signals are integrated and propagated by individual cells in complex tissue microenvironments remains largely limited. ENLIGHTEN is a research program dedicated to establish new mechanisms by which the immune system fight tumors or infections, based on the direct manipulation of immunological signals in vivo. In relevant mouse models of human disease, we will combine intravital imaging, fluorescent sensors and optogenetic actuators to control single cell functions in real-time. We wish to understand how T cells sense and interpret cell-contacts in lymphoid organs and in developing tumors at steady state or during immunotherapy. In addition, we aim to establish how cytokine and chemokine gradients form in tissues and are interpreted by immune cells during infection or cancer. By determining the functional contribution of single immune cells in vivo, we aim to identify new paradigms for information transfer in the immune system during cancer or infection and to establish the combination of optogenetics and intravital imaging as a powerful strategy for decoding immune reactions in the context of disease pathogenesis.

Keywords: tumor immunity,immunity to infection,intravital imaging,optogenetics,cytokines,chemokines
Mechanisms of neurotransmitter uptake and storage by synaptic vesicles (SVNeuroTrans)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Panel description: Nervous system development, homeostasis and ageing, nervous system function and dysfunction, systems neuroscience and modelling, biological basis of cognitive processes and of behaviour, neurological and mental disorders
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2017-ADG, 2017)
Start date: 2018-10-01
End date: 2024-06-30
Duration (months): 69.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Summary In presynaptic nerve endings, neurotransmitters are stored in synaptic vesicles (SVs) before they are released by exocytosis. SVs contain specific transporters that sequester and concentrate transmitters from cytoplasmic pools. All known vesicular transporters belong to the solute carrier (SLC) superfamily of proteins. They draw the energy for transport from an electrochemical proton gradient created by a V-ATPase across the vesicle membrane. However, despite recent progress it is still largely unclear how synaptic vesicles are filled with hundreds of mM transmitter within less than a minute. Open questions include (1) how exactly transport is linked to the proton gradient and which ions are coupled to solute transport, (2) how two different transmitters can be accommodated by the same SV, and (3) how much transmitter can be loaded into an SV and how the stored transmitter is kept inside and prevented from leaking out. Here we will focus on the vesicular transporters for glutamate (VGLUTs) and GABA/glycine (VGAT or VIAAT), the main excitatory and inhibitory transmitters in the CNS, and on the vesicular transporter for ATP (VNUT). Primarily we will use biochemical approaches employing purified SVs and artificial vesicles, recombinant proteins (either purified and reconstituted in liposomes or using vesicles isolated from transfected cells), in combination with quantitative in vitro assays, for characterizing the features of transport and storage. To achieve this, we plan to develop advanced methods involving adaptation of new fluorescent probes and microscopic analysis of loading and unloading using microfluidic devices. For these experiments, vesicles will be captured by affinity ligands such as antibodies printed on glass surfaces. This allows for analyzing small numbers of vesicles such as SVs derived from primary cultured neurons or transport vesicles from transfected cells that are tagged and labeled with fluorescent reporters before isolation.

Keywords: synaptic vesicles,neurotransmitters,membrane proteins,microfluidics
Single-Molecule Metal-Induced Energy Transfer (smMIET) (smMIET)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Panel description: Analytical chemistry, chemical theory, physical chemistry/chemical physics
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2019-ADG, 2019)
Start date: 2021-01-01
End date: 2025-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2740188.0
EU funding (EUR): 2740188.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The core aim of the project is to develop the technology of Single-Molecule Metal-Induced Energy Transfer (smMIET) for resolving macromolecular structure and dynamics with sub-nanometre spatial resolution and nanosecond temporal resolution. Metal-Induced Energy Transfer or MIET was first developed in our group in 2012 for mapping cellular membranes with nanometre axial resolution. It exploits the effect that a fluorescent molecule, when brought close to a metal surface, can transfer its excited state energy to surface plasmons in the metal, which leads to a strong distance-dependence of its fluorescence lifetime and intensity. This strong lifetime-distance dependence allows for converting a measured fluorescence lifetime into a distance from the metal surface. Combining this concept with single-molecule localization super-resolution microscopy and with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy will resolve three-dimensional structures with nanometre isotropic resolution, and structural dynamics on the nanometre length scale with nanosecond temporal resolution. Among its many applications, the project will develop and apply smMIET for resolving the global structure of macromolecular complexes and its dynamics, the conformational fluctuations of intrinsically disordered proteins, the dynamics of lipid membranes in a leaflet-resolved manner, or the transport of proteins across lipid bilayers. We will establish smMIET as a toolbox for structural and molecular biology that is comparable and complementary in its usefulness and versatility to conventional Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) or Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS).

Keywords: single molecule localization super resolution microscopy,single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy,nano optics and plasmonics
The nonlinear high energy regime of Quantum Chromodynamics (CGCglasmaQGP)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Fundamental constituents of matter
Panel description: Particle, nuclear, plasma, atomic, molecular, gas, and optical physics
Countries involved: Finland
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): 1935000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1935000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This proposal concentrates on Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) in its least well understood "final frontier": the high energy limit. The aim is to treat the formation of quark gluon plasma in relativistic nuclear collisions together with other high energy processes in a consistent QCD framework. This project is topical now in order to fully understand the results from the maturing LHC heavy ion program. The high energy regime is characterized by a high density of gluons, whose nonlinear interactions are beyond the reach of simple perturbative calculations. High energy particles also propagate nearly on the light cone, unaccessible to Euclidean lattice calculations. The nonlinear interactions at high density lead to the phenomenon of gluon saturation. The emergence of the "saturation scale", a semihard typical transverse momentum, enables a weak coupling expansion around a nonperturbatively large color field. This project aims to make progress both in collider phenomenology and in more conceptual aspects of nonabelian gauge field dynamics at high energy density: 1. Significant advances towards higher order accuracy will be made in cross section calculations for processes where a dilute probe collides with the strong color field of a high energy nucleus. 2. The quantum fluctuations around the strong color fields in the initial stages of a relativistic heavy ion collision will be analyzed with a new numerical method based on an explicit linearization of the equations of motion, maintaining a well defined weak coupling limit. 3. Initial conditions for fluid dynamical descriptions of the quark gluon plasma phase in heavy ion collisions will be obtained from a constrained QCD calculation. We propose to achieve these goals with modern analytical and numerical methods, on which the P.I. is a leading expert. This project would represent a leap in the field towards better quantitative first principles understanding of QCD in a new kinematical domain.

Keywords: quark gluon plasma,small x physics
Small animal proton Irradiator for Research in Molecular Image-guided radiation-Oncology (SIRMIO)

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: Germany
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2016-COG, 2016)
Start date: 2017-11-01
End date: 2022-12-31
Duration (months): 62.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1525925.0
EU funding (EUR): 1525925.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Precision small animal radiotherapy (RT) research is a young emerging field aiming at unravelling complex in-vivo mechanisms of radiation damage in target and non-target tissues, for translation into improved clinical treatment strategies. For commonly used X-rays, commercial small animal radiation research platforms were recently developed to provide precision imaged-guided RT comparable to state-of-the-art human treatment. Conversely, such platforms are not yet existing for proton beams, which are increasingly used in RT due to their superior ability to concentrate beam energy in the tumour and spare normal tissue. Pre-clinical research is thus carried out at the few available proton therapy facilities, lacking adequate beam quality and image-guidance for small animal treatment. To fill this gap, this project will realize and demonstrate the first prototype system for precision small animal proton irradiation at existing experimental beamlines of clinical facilities. Improved beam quality for targeting small structures will be achieved via a dedicated magnetic focusing system. Innovative in-situ image-guidance will combine ion-specific solutions of proton-transmission imaging (for treatment planning) and thermoacoustics (for verification of the beam range) with established ultrasound (for real-time morphological confirmation) and positron-emission-tomography (for functional assessment). The resulting multi-modal “sight” will be used to foster new workflows of treatment adaptation. The system will be thoroughly tested and finally deployed in a first in-vivo study in different orthotopic mouse cancer models, in comparison to reference X-ray RT at a commercial small animal platform. SIRMIO will deliver the first, compact and cost-effective precision small animal proton irradiator for advancing molecular oncology and animal-based proton RT research, thereby providing new experimental insights in biological in-situ responses towards proton and photon irradiation.

Keywords: proton therapy,small animal radiation research
Early Detection of cancer onset based on sensing field cancerization at the organ level (SENSITIVE)

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: Spain,Germany,Greece,Greece,Netherlands,Netherlands,United Kingdom
Call: FET-Open research and innovation actions (H2020-FETOPEN-1-2016-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2018-11-01
End date: 2022-10-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2965326.25
EU funding (EUR): 2965326.25
Participants: 7
Project status: SIGNED

Cancer is a major cause of death worldwide. Gastrointestinal (GI) tract tumors are among the most common and deadliest ones. Despite progress in imaging and treatment, the social impact of these diseases is enormous. All parties in the health sector agree that prevention and/or early diagnosis is the most effective means to deal with cancer. Currently, cancer is identified most often when symptomatic or large enough to be visualized in body scans or when histological alterations are already present. What is lacking is an imaging method that could detect tissue changes that facilitate or predict tumor development at an early stage. These alterations, collectively referred to as “field cancerization” is an exciting field of study in cancer biology with profound ramifications in clinical practice. Molecular mechanisms underlying field cancerization are being studied and the advances in molecular biology facilitate these studies. Never in the past however, have these changes been sensed/measured by an imaging modality at the organ level. We thus propose the development of a multimodal microscopy platform that will allow sensing of Raman and scattering properties at the organ level, in order to identify molecular and structural fingerprints of early stage disease in the GI tract. Successful implementation will allow the development of an endoscope especially designed for this purpose that will be used to detect early stage cancer in humans.

Keywords: field cancerization,raman spectroscopy,stimulated raman spectroscopy,scattering,spectroscopy,multimodal microscopy,endoscopic raman spectroscopy,multivariate statistics,tissue characterization