Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Application of Mechanical Forces on Axon Growth Cones via Magnetic Nanoparticles to Enhance Axon Regeneration in Central Nervous System (MAGFORCE4AXONGROWTH)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Ireland
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF, 2010)
Start date: 2011-09-05
End date: 2013-09-04
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 194810.4
EU funding (EUR): 194810.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The lack of axon regeneration following spinal cord injury (SCI) diminishes patients’ quality of life and poses a significant economic burden on the society. This project aims to investigate the complex axon guidance mechanism following a SCI scenario by applying mechanical tension on the growth cones (GCs) of central nervous system (CNS) axons via novel magnetic nanoparticles that are functionalized with neuronal cell adhesion molecule. It is hypothesized that the complex interaction of chemical and physical guidance cues at the cytoskeletal (CSK) level can be modulated by mechanically activating specific signalling pathways, e.g., RhoGTPases. To test this hypothesis, mechanical tension will be applied to multiple GCs simultaneously, using a magnetic tweezers system integrated with a microfluidic culture device, which grants exclusive access to axonal areas. The effect of tension on axon outgrowth will be characterized as a function of chemical and mechanical environment, while examining the roles of Rho GTPase signalling and CSK structure in this mechanotransduction process. In essence, this project poses a biological hypothesis that can only be tested using a combination of sophisticated engineering methods. The results of this multidisciplinary project will provide a better understanding of axon elongation mechanisms and potentially become a promising therapeutic approach for SCI. The fellow is a mechanical / biomedical engineer with experience in microfluidic neuron culture and live cell microscopy; whereas the host is a world leader in single molecule biophysics. This project will not only contribute to the scientific competency of Europe by tackling a very relevant medical problem, but also provide the fellow an excellent opportunity to gain high quality scientific training and complementary skills, necessary to obtain an independent researcher position in the European Research Area.

Keywords: axon outgrowth,magnetic tweezers,central nervous system,spinal cord injury,regeneration,growth cone,microfluidics,in vitro model
THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN IMPLANTABLE CELLULAR POWER SUPPLY BASED ON RABBIT CARDIAC CELLS. (RABBITCELLPSU)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF, 2010)
Start date: 2011-12-01
End date: 2013-11-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 185248.0
EU funding (EUR): 185248.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This project brings together a research fellow with a unique background in medical physics, electronics and chemistry to the biophysics group at ENS. The aim is to develop a new type of battery based on living cardiac myocyte cells. Through the application of newly-learnt life science skills the fellow will demonstrate how microfluidics can be used for the realization of this perpetual bio-battery. Global demographics is skewing to that of an aging population which has a higher prevalence of age related diseases and growing dependence on “medical fixes.” Pacemakers and other medical electronics require batteries which must be surgically replaced every 5-7 yrs. The hazardous waste and pain associated with surgical replacement of implanted batteries could be removed by the creation of a cellular power supply which uses blood glucose and oxygen as fuel and oxidizer to produce usable electricity. Demand for such a power supply in the future will be huge and presents an opportunity for Europe to get ahead of America. The scientific objectives are: • To create microfluidic devices with high resolution nano-structures for confining cells to specific channel regions. • To culture rabbit cardiac myocytes both individually and in colonies of varying sizes on the microfluidic device within the special adhesion zones. • To use electrophysiological and microscopic techniques to better understand the propagation of action potential through individual and colonies of cardiac cells which are specially separated within a microfluidic channel geometry. The planned deliverables are: • A series of microfluidic devices capable of supporting individual and colonies of myocytes; • A demonstrable cellular power supply capable of producing pulsed or continuous electrical currents; • Several high quality publications relating to myocyte communication and propagation of action potentials for use in an implantable cellular power supply.

Keywords: physical sciences,health sciences,natural sciences
Polycomb and Trithorax Group Proteins: Master Regulators of Adipose Tissue Function? (ATACC)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF, 2010)
Start date: 2012-06-01
End date: 2014-05-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 162242.4
EU funding (EUR): 162242.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Obesity and lipoatrophy are characterised by excess and paucity respectively of white adipose tissue. Both associated with insulin resistance, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, their prevalence will exceed 1 billion people by 2030. The convergence in metabolic phenotype of these two disparate disorders highlights how a precisely controlled, metabolically active adipose tissue is essential for proper health. Polycomb/Trithorax group (PcG/Trx) proteins were first identified in D. melanogaster as modulators of developmental patterning genes and are now recognized as fundamental executors of a chromatin-based silencing system that, capable of activating or silencing entire gene sets, is critical for multicellular development, differentiation and stem cell turnover. One of the most interesting features of PcG-induced gene-silencing patterns is to be transmitted through multiple cell divisions, thus touting them as mediators of cellular memory and critical to the stabilities of virtually all cell fates. Recent findings suggest a robust potential of PcG proteins to downregulate key developmental pathways involved in adipogenesis and adipose tissue function. Here we aim to define the role of PcG/Trx proteins in adipose tissue development, maintenance and function in vivo. This will be achieved by a multi-faceted approach including 1.functional characterization of temporally-inducible adipose tissue-specific PcG/Trx knock-out mice, 2.parallel profiling of gene expression, chromatin state, and PcG binding in mice and in highly characterized human samples from control and metabolically diseased patients, and 3.determination of mechanism through gain and loss-of-function approaches in vitro. Our plan merges the power of inducible gene targeting in mice with human genetics and disease biology. These approaches will help us understanding the role of chromatin remodeling in steady-state adipose tissue function and provide first hints at its contribution towards human disease.

Keywords: molecular genetics,epigenetics,chromatin and transcription,molecular endocrinology,obesity,disease biology,genetically modified organisms
Vocal athletes: Behavioural and brain bases for phonetic aptitude in monolingual and bilingual learners of a foreign language (VOCAL ATHLETES)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF, 2010)
Start date: 2011-06-01
End date: 2013-05-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 167065.6
EU funding (EUR): 167065.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Many learners of a foreign language struggle to correctly pronounce newly-learned speech sounds so that they can be understood by native listeners. Yet many others achieve this with apparent ease. What is responsible for these large individual differences in phonetic aptitude? Are better speakers also better listeners? The aim of this proposal is to determine whether there is a link between skills in production and skills in perception in learners of a foreign language. A special focus of the research will be to compare bilingual with monolingual learners, because bilinguals have had more experience with linguistic variation than monolinguals, and therefore might have greater phonetic aptitude. Bridging traditional linguistic and newer cognitive neuroscience approaches, the proposed study will determine the behavioural and brain bases for phonetic production and perception abilities.

Keywords: neurolinguistics,psycholinguistics,phonetics
TRans-national EUropean Ecosystem VALUEs of grasslands (TREUEVALUE)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Denmark
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF, 2010)
Start date: 2011-10-01
End date: 2013-09-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 297933.2
EU funding (EUR): 297933.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The ecosystem services approach is emerging as the dominant framework within which policies targeted at halting the degradation of the natural environment are developed. As attempts to place a monetary value on ecosystem service provision become the norm, there is a danger that the preservation of biodiversity may become substantially less important for policy-makers and the general public. However, biodiversity has an intrinsic value in and of itself. This cannot be ignored in Europe, where the cultural values and well-being gains associated with the natural world carry great weight for European citizens. Based on current evidence, it is unlikely that there are many win-win scenarios where both ecosystem service provision and biodiversity conservation can be maximised. Understanding how the values attributed to biodiversity and ecosystem service provision trade-off against one another is therefore fundamental if appropriate policies are to be implemented. The fellowship will take European grasslands, the continent’s most biodiverse habitats, as a focus and perform: (i) ecological surveys of biodiversity and ecosystem service provision; and (ii) state of the art non-market valuation techniques in order to: (1) Estimate the willingness to pay for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services enhancements within European grasslands. (2) Examine trade-offs between the economic valuation of biodiversity and other ecosystem services, such as carbon storage, food production and the maintenance of cultural landscapes. (3) Understand how both the values attributed to services and the trade-offs between them vary across international borders and with increasing distance from the study sites. (4) Integrate field-gathered data from the natural and social sciences across three EU member states (including two in Eastern Europe) to generate directly comparable valuation estimates.

Keywords: applied ecology,biodiversity conservation,choice experiments,economic valuation,ecosystem services,grassland,interdisciplinary,trans-national
HEADLINES. A historical study of the iconic transverse section of the head and the process of building a scientific consensus about the mind (1400-1550) (HEADLINES)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF, 2010)
Start date: 2012-02-15
End date: 2014-12-24
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 178048.0
EU funding (EUR): 178048.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

‘Headlines’ aims to study the visual cross-section of the head - a specific technique of projecting the inside as well as the outside of our head in a special way of ordering space as a show-box. This picture was developed in the early fourteenth century, was consolidated in scholarly work in the fifteenth and lasted until the seventeenth century, carrying Aristotelian concepts into the modern epoch. This iconic cross-section has been of great epistemological value in the process of disclosing and interpreting cognition in Europe. Why did this specific image and not another become the visual paradigm in natural philosophy? How was the image implicated in consolidating knowledge? And how did the picture affect the working premises of scholarly investigation? A crucial phase in the history of the head cross-section is its consolidation as a visual paradigm in the early fifteenth century. This picture was installed in the mainstream of contemporary scholarly knowledge by means of the Parvulus philosophiae naturalis, a natural philosophical textbook written by Peter of Dresden between 1405-1420. It is the earliest university textbook featuring rather systematically the head cross-section, which makes this source an obvious point of departure to study the role of an image in the process of ‘scientific’ consensus. The novelty of the perspective is the inversion of the focus. Instead of questioning how consensus has affected scholarly images, I will turn the question around and ask how the visual paradigm has affected research premises. The angle on education and pedagogy provides a new scope. Studies of the meaning of early modern scholarly images have most often searched for its role in the research of medieval scholars and engineers. The perspective on education opens up an epistemological approach in the history of education towards a history of educational knowledge.

Keywords: scholarly images,history of brain study,history of science,medieval history,cultural studies,epistemology,medieval philosophy,scientific consensus,visual culture,education,textbook
Marranism and Western-European Modernity (EUMAR)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF, 2010)
Start date: 2012-06-01
End date: 2014-05-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 186864.0
EU funding (EUR): 186864.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The project „Marranism and Western-European Modernity ” (EuMAR) has a particular approach to European history in modern times analyzing the mode of Jewish existence within this frame. The methodology is innovative and makes use of an exceptional reading of the issue. It is about the specific application of the concept of the "Marrano", the secret Jew. The construction of a European, trans-national Jewish identity, especially a secular identity, becomes evident. Moreover, a complex texture of “multiple modernities” (Shmuel N. Eisenstadt) within the very core of Western modernity is recognizable trough the prism of a Marrano paradigm. The Marrano does not represent something alien to European culture – and religious traditions – but is commonly assumed to be “the Other within” (Yirmiyahu Yovel) this culture. The thesis of the project EuMAR is that the Marrano is a central feature at the origin of European multicultural complexities, complexities which were augmented in the so-called post-emancipation period (after 1789). Furthermore, the backbone of the project EuMAR is that it delves into history, in particular the history of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), i.e. cultural Enlightenment and Europeanisation, as well as its reception in Western Europe, mainly in France, Italy and in the German speaking countries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the turning point of the 19th century. This historical transnational perspective on the Haskalah and its reception is highly innovative, as this Jewish intellectual movement and its interplay with the European Enlightenment have been prevalently studied in national contexts. Haskalah’s protagonists accomplished a “secular intellectual revolution” (Shmuel Feiner) in Western and Eastern Europe, a revolution whose impact becomes graspable if one examines its “entangled history” beyond national borders. Marranism is considered a marginal phenomenon, even though it is precisely the marginality that reinforces this concept.

Keywords: social sciences,jewish studies,marranism,european modernity,postcolonial studies,entangled history,transnational perspective
Minerals Integrated into Multiple Identifications of Cancer (MIMIC): a multidisciplinary approach for the ultra-sensitive detection of cancer biomarkers (MIMIC)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF, 2010)
Start date: 2011-03-01
End date: 2013-02-28
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 212092.8
EU funding (EUR): 212092.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Although cancer is a merciless disease, many cancers can be cured if detected in an early stage. This piece of evidence has pushed the scientific community hard to develop new diagnostic tools for the early detection of cancer. MIMIC aims to be a breakthrough in cancer diagnostics by combining extreme sensitivity with design flexibility in a detection platform that can be easily mass-fabricated, therefore granting the easy commercialization of the device for its use in healthcare. In this approach, a microchip that contains multiple electrodes is fabricated with standard procedures in the microelectronics industry. Each electrode is selectively modified with capture probes for different cancer biomarkers by trapping antibodies in a collagen matrix that is generated in situ on each sensor. This biomimetic gelation process, triggered by the application of an electric field with an atomic force microscope, allows one to obtain a complex device starting from a disposable, mass-produced chip. After recognition of the biomarkers with secondary antibodies labeled with alkaline phosphatase, the enzyme generates calcium phosphate crystals as observed in biomineralization processes. Subsequently, the presence of the crystals on the electrodes is detected as the signal of the bioassay by measuring the capacitance of the solution between the electrodes on the chip and the tip of an atomic force microscope as the counter electrode. By using the crystals fabricated by the enzyme as seeds to promote biomimetic crystal growth, multiple biomarkers could be detected at the single-molecule level. The project seeks several scientific milestones, such as the fabrication of the first marketable device that can detect several proteins at the single-molecule level and the integration of atomic force microscopy for protein concentration and reading the chip, which will surely boost the competitiveness of the European Union in the economically relevant fields of healthcare and nanotechnology

Keywords: analytical chemistry,electrochemistry,biosensors,biomineralization,atomic force microscopy,nanotechnology,bionanotechnology
Genetic Determinants of Disability in Older Women: British Women’s Heart & Health Study (GENDIS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF, 2010)
Start date: 2011-07-01
End date: 2013-07-31
Duration (months): 25.0
Total project cost (EUR): 145387.2
EU funding (EUR): 145387.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Background: Increased life expectancy and decreased birth rates resulted in more elderly people and in a higher prevalence of chronic diseases and associated disability throughout the EU. However, evidence of genetic variants associated with increased risk of disability and of causal links between underlying diseases and disability is limited. Objectives: To identify women who are at higher risk of disability and to delineate potential causal pathways resulting in disability with a special focus on inflammatory response. Specific objectives are: 1) To develop defined phenotypes of disability from different dimensions of the concept of disability. 2) To evaluate the effect of selected sets of biomarkers or physical measurements as proxies for different biological pathways with disability phenotypes. 3) To identify genetic variants associated with disability phenotypes. 4) To estimate the magnitude of causal associations between levels of selected inflammatory markers and disability phenotypes based on the concept of Mendelian randomisation. Methods: Already existing data from the British Women’s Heart and Health Study, a large prospective cohort study in the UK, will be used for this project. Latent class analysis will be used to delineate distinct phenotypes of disability. Associations between disability and different sets of biomarkers as proxies for biological pathways will be estimated with structural equation models. Selected genetic variants will be tested for association with disability. Causal effects of inflammatory response on disability will be evaluated in a Mendelian randomisation analysis. Relevance: This project will contribute to a better understanding of the epidemiology of disability and will provide novel insights into biological mechanisms underlying different disability phenotypes in elderly women. Results may help to improve predictions of long-term effects and inform implementation of preventive measures and optimal treatment strategies.

Keywords: health sciences,epidemiology,chronic diseases,genetics,disability