Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Engineering cancer dormancy as a collective emergent phenomenon: from matrix-enabled dormancy to collective dormancy-on-a-chip (DORMATRIX)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Materials Engineering
Panel description: Advanced materials development: performance enhancement, modelling, large -scale preparation, modification, tailoring, optimisation, novel  and combined use of materials, etc.
Countries involved: Spain
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2023-COG, 2023)
Start date: 2024-10-01
End date: 2029-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2349943.0
EU funding (EUR): 2349943.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Cancer dormancy and the trigger to transition to active metastatic growth is a big open question. Current in vivo models focus on niche-specific cell and molecular mechanisms, ignoring biophysical aspects. Dormancy evolves with complex spatio-temporal dynamics; yet, there is a knowledge gap in the understanding of the heterogeneity of the units, and the dynamics of their interaction and evolution. Emergence occurs when a critical mass of units synergistically communicates giving rise to a new macro-level organization, with properties greater than the sum of the units. Engineering emergent phenomena in biological systems is a big research challenge as they originate from multiscale communication. In DORMATRIX, I propose a radically new view. I hypothesize that the balance between cancer dormancy and “awakening” is a collective emergent phenomenon, whereby a critical mass of micro-units communicates with each other and the environment in order to transition to metastatic growth. The main objective of DORMATRIX is to engineer breast cancer (BC) dormancy as a collective emergent phenomenon using biomaterials-based dormancy-on-a-chip devices. My previous data shows that we can (i) apply biophysical cues to control BC proliferation and (ii) visualize in vivo early BC bone metastasis. I will now address this outstanding challenge with a multidisciplinary approach and 1) apply biophysical principles with novel biomaterials to model in vitro cancer micro-units, 2) develop advanced 3D imaging to visualize collective cancer dormancy and bone microdamage, 3) develop in silico models based on evolutionary game theory to predict the dynamics, and 4) prove my hypothesis with dormancy-on-a-chip devices. Understanding the critical mass and multiscale communication required for emergent phenomena will enable the development of novel therapies to delay or prevent metastasis. The resulting technology for engineering emergent phenomena will spark research on other biological systems.

Keywords: biomaterials biomedical engineering hydrogels biophysical properties advanced 3d imaging microfluidics physical science of cancer
UnRAVElling the dynamics of many-body open systems: Collective dynamics of quantum trajectories (RAVE)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Panel description: Particle, nuclear, plasma, atomic, molecular, gas, and optical physics
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC ADVANCED GRANTS (ERC-2021-ADG, 2021)
Start date: 2022-11-01
End date: 2027-10-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1075000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1075000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

With the flourishing of quantum information processing, the study of open quantum system dynamics has become of paramount importance for the ultimate success of quantum technologies. The phenomenology becomes increasingly rich when decoherence and dissipation arise in quantum systems with many degrees of freedom, leading to a flurry of different phases of matter. RAVE is devoted to the study of collective phenomena in synthetic, many-body open quantum systems through investigation of the dynamics of quantum trajectories. Following the dynamics at the level of its trajectories will capture features that are washed out by looking at averaged observables, i.e. in the density matrix. RAVE will show that there are collective phenomena visible only in the dynamics of single trajectories, and propose experimental schemes to observe them. This will lead to a new classification of phases in quantum many-body open systems and help clarify the relations between entanglement, correlations and non-equilibrium thermodynamics. In those cases where the steady-state phase breaks time-translational invariance, RAVE will contribute to unify apparently different concepts such as synchronisation and time-crystals. The statistics associated with the behaviour of quantum jumps in many-body systems is also important for characterizing the quality and performance of quantum information processing protocols. To address the key questions posed by the project, RAVE will develop a promising new methodology based on replicas and use it to design open system quantum simulators able to provide information at the level of single trajectories. RAVE is a highly interdisciplinary programme which will have significant impact in the fields of condensed matter, statistical physics, quantum information and stochastic thermodynamics.

Keywords: many body open systems,phase transitions
From Dale Arden to Valentina. Americanisation and gender representation in Italian comics, 1934-1965. (ITACOMICS)

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: Social Sciences and Humanities
Countries involved: Belgium,Ireland
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2022 (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-09-11
End date: 2025-09-10
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 175920.0
EU funding (EUR): 175920.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Comics are a powerful means through which American values reached Italy in the 1930s and became part of its culture. With their formative potential influence on younger readers and wide distribution, comics provide a unique line of enquiry for exploring cultural changes, as both a reflection of and a contributor to such changes. My project explores the evolution of Italian comics from the 1930s to the 1960s, focusing on gender discourse and transnational exchange to offer a novel perspective on modern Italian culture. By examining comics in the Fascist era, the post-war era, and the economic boom era, ITACOMICS examines the impact of the American model in shaping Italian comics and assesses their impact in gender representation while taking into account the sociopolitical context which influenced comics production. This approach will show how such cultural dialogue produced a cross-cultural product that reflected transnational influences and contributed to shaping the Italian popular imaginary. Italy’s peculiar political history enables me to use comics to examine how society developed from an authoritarian regime to democracy from a perspective still largely unexplored. The project examines popular comics in Italy in the years between 1934, when the first American adventure comics were published, and 1965, when Valentina appeared, a female-focused comic that revolutionised the image of womanhood portrayed in comics. This analysis highlights changes in Italian culture and society and challenges the centrality of American comics in the English-speaking scholarship. By posing broader questions about interconnected cultures, showing how cultural specificities coexist with foreign models, and how foreign gender models adapt to a specific context, my research project will provide ground-breaking perspectives on comics’ reinterpretation and incorporation of American culture in the Italian context, showing how the two cultures are deeply intertwined.

Keywords: americanisation popular culture children s periodicals popular press gender representation femininity masculinity transnational modern comics italian studies
Ecosystem for rapid adoption of modelling and simulation METhods to address regulatory needs in the development of orphan and paediatric medicines (ERAMET)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Health
Theme: Health
Destination: Maintaining an innovative, sustainable and globally competitive health industry
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Belgium,Netherlands,Spain,United Kingdom,Italy,France,Norway,Greece
Call: Modelling and simulation to address regulatory needs in the development of orphan and paediatric medicines (HORIZON-HLTH-2023-IND-06, 2023)
Start date: 2024-01-01
End date: 2027-12-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3865507.06
EU funding (EUR): 3865043.13
Participants: 19
Project status: SIGNED

ERAMET will provide an integrated approach for developers and regulators’ decision-making for paediatric and orphan drugs, centred on the drug development questions. This will constitute a transparent ecosystem for drug development and assessment, that will facilitate the adoption of modelling and simulation (M&S) methods and related data types (including real word data such as registries and electronic healthcare data). The overall objective of ERAMET is to provide and implement a framework for establishing the credibility of M&S methods and related results as sources of evidence within regulatory procedures. The ecosystem proposed by ERAMET will be based on three pillars: (1) A repository connecting questions, data and methods. (2) The development and validation of high-quality standards for data and analytical methods (including M&S and hybrid approaches). These will cover computational M&S, digital twins, AI, hybrid approaches, standard statistics and pharmacometrics, as analytical methods and alternative data types and sources such as RWD, eHealth data, registries, historical regulatory submissions, scientific and (non)clinical trials). (3) An AI-based platform that will automate and optimise the data collection, formatting and modelling and simulation analysis and implement the credibility assessment. As part of ERAMET, the ecosystem will be applied to five use-cases including paediatric extrapolation and characterisation of drug benefit/risk in 4 groups of rare diseases, namely ataxia, transfusion dependent haemoglobinopathies, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, and paediatric tuberculosis. Each of the use-case is planned to lead to submission and regulatory approval of at least one validated M&S tool via the EMA qualification procedure. Training will be proposed to familiarise regulatory assessors, drug developers and clinical researchers with this new approach.

Keywords: regulatory,drug development,modelling and simulation methods,standards,ecosystem,orphan and paediatric medicines
Advancing Pandemic Preparedness: Innovative Multidisciplinary Strategies for COMBATing Severe Dengue (COMBAT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Health
Theme: Health
Destination: Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Sweden,Netherlands,Germany,Guatemala,Italy,Norway,India,United States
Call: Pandemic preparedness and response: Host-pathogen interactions of infectious diseases with epidemic potential (HORIZON-HLTH-2024-DISEASE-08, 2024)
Start date: 2024-11-01
End date: 2029-10-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 7999992.5
EU funding (EUR): 7999992.5
Participants: 16
Project status: SIGNED

The rapid increase in dengue fever incidence poses a formidable challenge to global public health, with an estimated 100 million symptomatic infections annually and a geographical spread predicted to widen due to climate change and urbanization. The COMBAT initiative, a pioneering European Research Constellation, aims to address this by leveraging advanced technologies and knowledge from endemic regions to develop innovative solutions for dengue prevention and treatment. This project advances super-resolution microscopy to observe rare events in host-virus interactions and introduces novel brain-on-chip technology for in-depth dengue pathogenesis modeling. It focuses on developing innovative antiviral strategies to target dengue virus (DENV) entry and mitigate cytokine storms through host-directed therapy. Furthermore, it leverages multi-omics strategies to identify early predictive biomarkers of severe dengue and develop artificial intelligence tools with the aim of crafting comprehensive policies for the EU’s pandemic preparedness. COMBAT employs a unique experimental strategy that integrates cutting-edge technologies such as super-resolution optical microscopy, AI, and machine learning for advanced modeling of the dengue virus-host interactions and early prediction of severe outcomes. By combining efforts in drug repurposing, development of a brain-on-chip model for neuropathogenesis studies, and employing nanoscale imaging for in-depth analysis of the virus's impact, COMBAT represents a significant leap forward in the fight against dengue. The project not only aims to enhance our understanding of the disease but also to create scalable and affordable tools for pandemic preparedness, setting a new standard in interdisciplinary research to COMBAT viral epidemics.

Keywords: drug repurposing
Rewriting Rights: Feminist Legal Narra(c)tors, from Arendt to Women’s Courts (RE-RIGHTING)

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: Social Sciences and Humanities
Countries involved: Italy
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2025-01-01
End date: 2026-12-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 172750.08
EU funding (EUR): 172750.08
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The scene of the trial has always been at the core of feminist theories and practices of law, since it has often been identified as the space in which women’s voices and bodies could break into the legal scene in order to claim for justice. The project aims to broaden our gaze of the legal scene adopting a new perspective: those of women who, even if they are not the main legal actors (judges, lawyers, plaintiffs), engage with the language of rights in order to re-tell, re-write or re-stage a trial from their situated position. Their voices do not limit to narrate the event of the trial, but actually perform a retrial with the dual aim of highlighting the failure of the legal language in doing justice, and offering alternative possibilities to regenerate and re-signify it. From Arendt’s pioneering “report” on the Eichmann trial to the experiences of Women’s Courts, these both critical and creative practices are disseminated in the feminist field, but they have never been studied together. Through the newly defined concept of Legal Narra(c)tors, this ambitious and timely project aims to produce the first study of these narrative and performative practices of retrial, which have the merit of promoting a critical but not “fatalistic” approach to justice using as starting point of the reasoning – in line with the feminist situated knowledge – the story of a case rather than a theoretical abstraction. The main objective of the project is threefold: (1) empirically, to build an archive of feminist narrative and performative practices of retrial; (2) conceptually, to provide a definition and a theoretical framework for the new expression “Legal Narra(c)tors”; (3) normatively, to explore how main legal categories such as equality, difference, recognition, gender, subject (of rights), victim, witness, truth (and truth-seeking), and reparation are re-signified by these practices.

Keywords: feminist justice counter narratives politics of resignification political trial law and narrative law and performativity legal storytelling women s tribunals
A biomimetic zonally gene-activated load-bearing reinforced hydrogel for meniscus repair (GEMGEL)

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: Ireland,Canada
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-08-01
End date: 2028-07-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 347465.76
EU funding (EUR): 347465.76
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

Meniscal tears are the most prevalent injuries of the knee joint and a major contributing factor to osteoarthritis (OA) development. Current treatments cannot effectively repair meniscus and only delay the onset of OA. Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM) approaches aim to promote the regenerative capacity of the tissue; however, this is hindered by the challenges of replicating the complex microenvironment of the tissue coupled with its intrinsic avascularity. My overarching aim is to develop an innovative zonal load bearing scaffold through melt electrowriting optimised using a machine learning approach to mimic meniscus biomechanics and extra cellular matrix (ECM) architecture. This will be integrated with corresponding zonal gene activated hydrogels using transcription factors implicated in meniscus regeneration to induce intrinsic regenerative capabilities. Prof. Khademhosseini (Terasaki Institute; outgoing phase), has extensive experience in hydrogels, 3D printing and stem cells. I will develop a 3D layered microfibre reinforced hydrogel scaffold mimicking the collagen architecture, biochemical and biomechanical properties of the meniscus and test its biological performance using human stem cells. Prof. Fergal O’Brien (RCSI; return phase), has extensive experience in scaffold-mediated gene therapy, particularly for musculoskeletal applications. Using techniques established in his group, I will develop zonally gene-activated scaffolds that can be used as a local delivery system in a radically new regenerative therapy for meniscus tears. Under the supervision of Prof. O’Brien and Khademhosseini, who will guide my Career Development Plan, I will develop key complementary skills in project management, entrepreneurship, commercialization, dissemination and leadership. These, along with advanced research competencies, will help me become an independent scientist, enhancing my visibility and competitiveness in in the TERM field.

Keywords: scaffolds,hydrogels,biomimetic,bioprinting,meniscus,collagen
Personalized CANcer Primary Prevention research through Citizen Participation and digitally enabled social innovation (4P-CAN)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Mission
Theme: Cancer
Destination: Cancer
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Romania,Ukraine,Belgium,North Macedonia,Bulgaria,Moldova, Republic of,Portugal,Montenegro,Italy,Ireland,France
Call: Improving and upscaling primary prevention of cancer through implementation research (HORIZON-MISS-2022-CANCER-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-05-01
End date: 2027-04-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 5199480.0
EU funding (EUR): 5199479.25
Participants: 18
Project status: SIGNED

With a strong belief that primary prevention of cancer represents a collective responsibility (citizens, professionals, decision-makers), during a 4 year period, 4P-CAN builds on an innovative vision to understand the complex system that surrounds the citizen, the person, and how it increases the risk for cancer on three major levels - macro (at the national level), meso/mezzo (at the community level) and micro (at the individual level). Following the European Code Against Cancer recommendations as a narrative reference and combining implementation research (including economic sciences), social sciences and humanities (SSH), together with behavioral sciences, and innovative technological approaches, 4P-CAN ultimately delivers new personalized tools for primary prevention of cancer in Central and Eastern European countries from the consortium. The co-created knowledge is then used to personalize the primary prevention interventions through Living-labs and implement personalized communication campaigns on cancer prevention. The project will focus on some of the main modifiable risk factors for cancer occurrence: smoking, alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, excess body weight (overweight and obesity), HPV and HBV infections preventable through vaccination, as well as environmental pollution (including radon), and the understanding of the barriers in front of the policy implementation and individual adherence to healthy behaviors in countries from Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, Republic of Moldova, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Ukraine), to improve as a consequence the primary prevention activities and reduce the inequalities. Altogether, 17 organizations from 11 different countries are getting together to achieve these goals, i.e. Balkan countries (EU Member States and non-EU Member States), part of CEE: Romania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro; Republic of Moldova and Ukraine; and Western EU countries (Portugal, Italy, France, Ireland, Belgium). This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on ‘Prevention and early detection’.

Keywords: cancer primary prevention,implementation research,social innovation,personalized communication