Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Systemic Endotoxemia as the driver of chronic inflammation - Biomarkers and novel therapeutic targets for Arthritis (ENDOTARGET)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Health
Theme: Health
Destination: Staying Healthy in a rapidly changing society
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Finland,Estonia,Italy,Spain,Switzerland,Austria,Germany,Portugal
Call: Personalised blueprint of chronic inflammation in health-to-disease transition (HORIZON-HLTH-2022-STAYHLTH-02, 2022)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2026-12-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 6997820.0
EU funding (EUR): 6997820.0
Participants: 15
Project status: SIGNED

Rheumatic diseases (RDs) affect more than 40% of Europe's population and cause significant disability, pain, reduced lifespan and a very high economic burden. In this project, we will explore the role of chronic systemic inflammation caused by intestinal microbiota derived immunologically active compounds, as a driver in the transition from health to disease, with a special focus on three RDs; osteoarthritis (OA), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and spondylarthritis (SpA). We aim to explore the relationship between gut microbiota, intestinal permeability, and endotoxemia. We aim to understand their role as drivers of disease onset and disease activity in RA, SpA and OA, as well as targets of preventive and therapeutic approaches. We will study the events leading from health to disease onset by i) taking advantage of geographically diverse large cohorts of people with available blood and faeces samples, ii) search for novel risk biomarkers for RA, SpA, and OA by using high-throughput OMICS-based analyses iii) conducting targeted clinical studies, iv) performing in vitro mechanistic studies to explore the gut-joint axis using tissue explant cultures and organ-on-chip models v) conducting interventional proof of concept studies of diet, faecal transplantation and a gut permeability decreasing drug in RA and SpA patients, vi) exploring in vitro new potential drugs or nutraceuticals to cope with endotoxemia effects on target tissues. By combining all these results, machine learning and AI-informed rheumatic disease prediction tool will be developed for clinicians to help them identify patients with increased risk of developing the target diseases. It will thus assist in the choice of personalized blueprint intervention to reduce the risk of these diseases and disease activity in RA and SpA and to slow down the progression of OA.

Keywords: chronic inflammation,microbiota,systemic endotoxemia,intestinal permeability,rheumatoid arthritis,osteoarthritis,spondylarthritis
European Partnership Driving Urban Transitions (DUT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Climate, Energy and Mobility
Theme: Energy
Destination: Cross-sectoral solutions for the climate transition
Action type: COFUND actions
Partnership: Driving Urban Transitions (co-funded)
Countries involved: Austria,Belgium,Switzerland,Germany,Czechia,Denmark,Estonia,Finland,France,Greece,Hungary,Iceland,Italy,Latvia,Lithuania,Netherlands,Norway,Poland,Portugal,Romania,Slovakia,Spain,Sweden,Türkiye,United Kingdom,Bulgaria,Slovenia,Cyprus
Call: Co-Funded Partnership: Driving Urban Transitions to a sustainable future (DUT) (HORIZON-CL5-2021-D2-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-01-01
End date: 2030-12-31
Duration (months): 108.0
Total project cost (EUR): 310663002.74
EU funding (EUR): 75221428.57
Participants: 71
Project status: SIGNED

The DUT Partnership builds upon and steps up the ambition and efforts of the Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe (JPI UE). With its partners from 28 countries, the DUT Partnership aims at developing and implementing a transformative research and innovation (R&I) programme to strengthen urban transitions towards climate-neutral, inclusive and sustainable urban areas. With national and regional R&I programme owners, funders and urban policy-related public authorities, DUT is strongly building upon and aligning with national and regional strategies and policies. In order to support cities along their specific strategies, the Partnership focuses on three critical urban sectors, energy, mobility and circular economy, and their interrelations. Three Transition Pathways (TPs) – Positive Energy Districts (PED), the 15-minute City (15minC) and Circular Urban Economies (CUE) – will be addressed with a long-term perspective. DUT will not only provide funding for transnational R&I projects in and across these areas through implementing co-funded JCs, but establish a comprehensive programme management to support capacity building and enhance the (policy) impact of these projects and their results. In this regard, programme activities will address capacity building and empowerment of all urban stakeholder groups to engage in urban R&I and co-design solutions. Urban living labs (ULLs) will be fostered as an important concept to support local experimentation and inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration. New approaches towards dissemination and mainstreaming of research results will be developed with the ambition to bring results into our cities. Strategic synthesis, as well as recommendations and references for policy making will be provided with particular focus on contributions to the Urban Agenda for the EU (UAEU), the European mission for climate-neutral and smart cities (CNSC) and the European Green Deal (EGD). Efforts will be taken to position the DUT Partnership internationally and mobilise international partners to join forces in DUT.

Keywords: urban transition,transformative randi,energy,urban mobility,circular economy,ped,15 minute city,climate neutral cities,living labs,urban sustainability,urban greening,regenerative urbanism
Green chemistry and biotechnology approaches for the development of nature-based cosmetics (GreenCosmIn)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Staff Exchanges
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: Greece,France,Germany,Poland,Mongolia,Tunisia,Austria,French Polynesia
Call: MSCA Staff Exchanges 2022 (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-SE-01, 2022)
Start date: 2024-03-01
End date: 2028-02-29
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1405628.57
EU funding (EUR): 1297200.0
Participants: 14
Project status: SIGNED

GreenCosmIn aims to form a tight multisectoral and interdisciplinary network for the implementation of green approaches for natural resources exploration and exploitation, towards the production of cosmetics. Extraction, advanced phytochemical analysis and dereplication, in vitro screening, and biotechnological production technologies will be applied in the development of natural cosmetic ingredients and their incorporation into final products. GreenCosmIn will use the prior knowledge of the consortium in biodiversity exploitation and green chemistry extraction with innovative extraction media in lab and pilot scale, for the discovery of extracts and compounds with bioactivity related to skin cosmetic properties (antioxidant, anti-hyperpigmentation, anti-ageing, anti-inflammatory, emollient, antimicrobial, prebiotic), and safety to humans and the environment. Biotechnology approaches and microorganism assisted methodologies will be applied to produce active compounds both in lab and large scale. Active ingredients will be incorporated into final products with preformulation studies and LCA/consumer satisfaction analyses will be performed. A balanced consortium of six Academic partners in the field of natural products chemistry, biodiversity, biotechnology, cosmetology, and biology, will efficiently interact with five Non-Academic partners in the field of metabolomics, biotechnology, cosmetics, and natural ingredients development. Among them, three Associated partners from biodiversity hot spots, ensure the collaboration towards innovative results, and secondments of researchers meaningful for their career and skill development, and the foundation of strong collaborations to be retained after completion of the project. Finally, GreenCosmIn will provide training and transfer of knowledge to developing countries of the consortium, such as Mongolia, Tunisia, French Polynesia, and vice versa as well.

Keywords: natural products chemistry,pharmacognosy,in vitro screening,cosmetics,natural deep eutectic solvents,green extraction,virtual screening,plant tissue culture,scale up,fermentation
ZBP1-induced Inflammation and REcognition of Z-Nucleic Acids (ZIREN)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Belgium
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-04-01
End date: 2027-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 200400.0
EU funding (EUR): 200400.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Nucleic acids are potent inducers of an immune response. Nucleic acids normally exist in a right-handed conformation. However, during conditions of cellular stress, nucleic acids can also adopt an unusual, left-handed “Z-form”. These Z-nucleic acids, including Z-RNA and Z-DNA, are sensed by two proteins: ADAR1 and ZBP1. While ADAR1 binding to Z-nucleic acids prevents immune responses, activation of ZBP1 results in the activation of an innate immune response. It is clear, that ZBP1 has important functions in antiviral defence, cancer immunity and during autoinflammation, yet the mechanisms that govern its activation and which pathways downstream of ZBP1 are activated, is poorly understood. Additionally, a big hurdle currently preventing the molecular characterisation of ZBP1 signalling, is the lack of a selective ZBP1 agonist. I hypothesise that understanding the molecular mechanisms regulating ZBP1 activation and its downstream signalling pathways is fundamental for the development of therapeutics targeting this pathway. To test this hypothesis, I will address three major knowledge gaps in ZBP1 biology: (i) by purification of active ZBP1 complexes followed by nanopore sequencing and through solid-phase nucleic acid synthesis, I will generate a bona fide ZBP1 agonist, (ii) I will validate the ZBP1 agonist in vivo by testing its adjuvanticity in a mouse vaccination model, and (iii) by using a small compound and a genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 knockout approaches, I will identify upstream and downstream regulators of ZBP1 signalling. Together, my proposed research plan will contribute to understanding the activation mechanisms of ZBP1, as well as its regulatory factors laying the foundation for understanding human ZBP1-driven (patho)physiology and development of therapeutic intervention.

Keywords: z nucleic acids,zbp1,z dna,z rna,cell death signalling,inflammation,apoptosis,necroptosis
Commercial feasibility of a cell-free reactor setup for optimisation of complex enzymatic pathways (OptiPlex)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call: ERC PROOF OF CONCEPT GRANTS1 (ERC-2022-POC1, 2022)
Start date: 2022-07-01
End date: 2023-12-31
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This project will explore the commercial feasibility of the first continuous stirred tank reactor solution for the synthetic replication and optimisation of complex enzymatic pathways. Our technology provides an urgently needed alternative for bioengineered organisms. Where normally raw materials of varying quality, competition between intermediates, toxicity, complex networks of feedback loops and other poorly understood factors limit production rates, our approach can be used to converge effectively to optimised biochemistry . As part of the project, we will establish two industrially relevant pathways, advance the software solution of our platform and develop a commercialisation strategy.
Healthcare Innovation Procurement Network (Procure4Health)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Health
Theme: Health
Destination: Ensuring access to innovative, sustainable and high-quality health-care
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Spain,Poland,Türkiye,Portugal,Italy,Estonia,Greece,Germany,Sweden,Denmark,Belgium,United Kingdom,France,Norway,Netherlands
Call: Health care innovation procurement network (HORIZON-HLTH-2021-CARE-05, 2021)
Start date: 2022-06-01
End date: 2025-05-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 4940000.0
EU funding (EUR): 4939995.0
Participants: 34
Project status: CLOSED

The objective is to create a network/community/ecosystem of procurers and relevant stakeholders in PPI. The idea is to empower all the actors involved in PPI through this network, focusing on the procurers. We need to attract both experienced procurers and not experienced procurers if we want to succeed in this. We will also need to analyse current barriers and needs of procurers, and then create and shared tools to facilitate PPI for all the actors involved.
RNA PROCESSING FOR ANTI-CANCER IMMUNOTHERAPY (CANCERNA)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Health
Theme: Health
Destination: Unlocking the full potential of new tools, technologies and digital solutions for a healthy society
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Israel,Spain,Germany,Netherlands,Belgium,Portugal
Call: Next generation advanced therapies to treat highly prevalent and high burden diseases with unmet medical needs (HORIZON-HLTH-2021-TOOL-06, 2021)
Start date: 2022-06-01
End date: 2025-05-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 5999381.25
EU funding (EUR): 5999381.0
Participants: 14
Project status: CLOSED

In the past five years, RNA therapeutics have witnessed a true revolution. Several RNA-based therapies have been approved for the treatment of genetic diseases, with unprecedented successes, as in spinal muscular atrophy. Moreover, the past year showed the world that RNA-based therapies, namely mRNA vaccines, can be the answer to a worldwide pandemic and save the lives of millions. RNA therapies are however lagging behind in clinical oncology. The overarching aim of this multi-armed project is to develop RNA-based cancer treatments. In parallel, the development of immune checkpoint inhibitors has revolutionized cancer care, but its success remains limited to a subset of patients. Altogether, for 60 percent of the eight million new cancer patients diagnosed in Europe each year, including almost all children with solid tumors, there is no EMA- or FDA-approved immunotherapy option, and they are left out of the circle of hope. In response, CANCERNA aims to build on these two breakthroughs and apply RNA-based therapeutics to overcome key barriers to unfold successful anti-cancer immune responses. Our two key objectives are: on one hand, harness the modulation of RNA processing to enhance the accessibility and immune susceptibility of the tumour and its microenvironment. While on the other hand, enhance the activity of the immune system by retargeting immune effector cells, modulating RNA splicing of key immune receptors and developing personalized mRNA vaccines. The project will focus on two cancer types harboring splicing factor mutations and being generally refractory to immunotherapy: acute myeloid leukemia, relevant for pediatric cancer, and uveal melanoma. The collective knowledge of our consortium of RNA scientists, clinicians and biotech-pharma experts in RNA processing, RNA drug design and delivery, biocomputing and immuno-oncology provides a unique opportunity to significantly advance novel RNA technologies into successful cancer therapies.

Keywords: rna processing,splicing factors,cancer immunotherapy,vaccines,adoptive cell therapy,alternative splicing,oligonucleotides rna degradation,nonsense mediated decay
Hybrid and Interpretable Deep neural audio machines (HI-Audio)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Computer Science and Informatics
Panel description: Informatics and information systems, computer science, scientific computing, intelligent systems
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC ADVANCED GRANTS (ERC-2021-ADG, 2021)
Start date: 2022-10-01
End date: 2027-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2482317.5
EU funding (EUR): 2482317.5
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Machine Listening, or AI for Sound, is defined as the general field of Artificial Intelligence applied to audio analysis, understanding and synthesis by a machine. The access to ever increasing super-computing facilities, combined with the availability of huge data repositories (although largely unannotated), has led to the emergence of a significant trend with pure data-driven machine learning approaches. The field has rapidly moved towards end-to-end neural approaches which aim to directly solve the machine learning problem for raw acoustic signals but often only loosely taking into account the nature and structure of the processed data. The main consequences are that the models are 1) overly complex, require massive amounts of data to be trained and extreme computing power to be efficient (in terms of task performance), and 2) remain largely unexplainable and non-interpretable. To overcome these major shortcomings, we believe that our prior knowledge about the nature of the processed data, their generation process and their perception by humans should be explicitly exploited in neural-based machine learning frameworks. The aim of HI-Audio is to build such hybrid deep approaches combining parameter-efficient and interpretable signal models, musicological and physics-based models, with highly tailored, deep neural architectures. The research directions pursued in HI-Audio will exploit novel deterministic and statistical audio and sound environment models with dedicated neural auto-encoders and generative networks and target specific applications including speech and audio scene analysis, music information retrieval and sound transformation and synthesis.

Keywords: audio models,speech and audio scene analysis,music information retrieval,deep learning,curriculum learning,attention models,source separation,physics based and statistical model of reverberation,sparse representations
Parasite-inspired Soft-rigid Hybrid Microrobots for Brain Tissue Penetration (HyBOT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Germany
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2027-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 217965.12
EU funding (EUR): 217965.12
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Biological soft tissues, such as brain tissues, present a major challenge for wireless biomedical microdevices to penetrate, due to the complex anatomy and viscoelastic mechanical properties. Parasitic organisms can penetrate plant roots using a hardened stylet while navigating with the soft body undulation. The combination of the rigid and soft biological morphology allows these parasites to fracture, anchor to, and extract nutrients from the plant cells. Inspired by these parasites, I propose a novel microrobot with a stiff head and a flexible body designed to penetrate brain tissue, enabling the treatment of hard-to-treat brain cancers, such as glioblastoma. These cancer regions are often inaccessible to large surgical tools due to their critical functional importance. In this project, the microrobot will be fabricated using two-photon lithography to achieve precise micro-scale features. Theoretical modeling and finite element analysis will be employed to explore the robot-tissue interactions, optimizing the design and actuation parameters. The propulsion will be validated in hydrogel models and ex vivo animal experiments. This research aims to develop new microrobots for glioblastoma treatment, paving the way for innovative minimally-invasive medical procedures.

Keywords: bioinspired microrobots,hybrid microrobots,brain tissue penetration,magnetic actuation,viscoelastic solid,tissue fracture,robot tissue interaction,finite element analysis
MINERVA: A Haplotype Reconstruction Method for Indigenous South American Populations with Diverse Demographic Histories (MINERVA)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Denmark,Colombia
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2026-09-01
End date: 2028-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 247553.28
EU funding (EUR): 247553.28
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

In this project, MINERVA (Minimal Individual for Explaining Root Variation in Ancestry), I will craft novel computational methods to infer the minimal number of individuals required to explain the genetic diversity in populations that underwent severe bottlenecks. Through a scalable algorithmic framework, MINERVA will enable accurate autosomal haplotype reconstructions. We will leverage non-recombining genome regions, the Y chromosome, and mitochondrial DNA, inherited paternally and maternally, respectively. This will be reconciled with the autosomal phylogenies to provide a complete view of population dynamics across recombining and non-recombining genomic regions. With a new dataset from South America, this project will illuminate the genetic ancestry of the continent’s first settlers. While initially focusing on South America, MINERVA will be applicable to other bottlenecked populations, such as those in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Sardinia. Currently, no accurate methods exist for reconstructing ancestral haplotypes in bottlenecked populations, which is essential for determining whether high-frequency deleterious variants are inherited from ancestral haplotypes, arose through selection, are de novo mutations, or were introduced through admixture. This research will advance our understanding of population-specific genetic variation and improve the accuracy of genome-wide association studies and polygenic risk scores. Bottlenecked populations often have higher rates of genetic diseases, and our work will offer critical insights into their origins and transmission, with implications for genetic counseling and public health. During a secondment, I will collaborate with the Wuasikamas organization in southern Colombia to ensure cultural relevance. By engaging with the Inga community, I will present findings and foster a reciprocal exchange of knowledge, ensuring the research respects and benefits the communities involved.