The swift development of a vaccine against the Zika virus has become an urgent priority for, among others, EU Commissioner for Research and Innovation Carlos Moedas, who has pledged an initial €10m into its research.
“I have instructed my services to mobilise €10m for urgently needed research on the Zika virus in response to the upsurge in cases of severe congenital brain malformations across Latin America and their suspected link to Zika virus infections,” Moedas said.
The money contributed by the EU will come from Horizon 2020 for investment in diagnostics and experimental drug candidates research. At least three pharmaceutical companies, including French giant Sanofi, have also announced their commitment to tackling the mosquito-borne virus.
Following criticism for a slow response regarding the Ebola outbreak of 2014, for which the EU pledged around €25m, the World Health Organization declared the Zika outbreak a global public health emergency and anticipates infection of up to four million people in the South and central American regions so far this year.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) declares that the risk in the EU of transmission remains extremely low: ‘There is no evidence of transmission Zika virus in Europe to date and imported cases are rare’, its website states.
There are currently five invasive Aedes mosquito species known to be established in Europe, namely Aedes albopictus, Aedes aegypti, Aedes japonicus, Aedes atropalpus and Aedes koreicus. A rapid risk assessment compiled by the ECDC can be found here.
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The swift development of a vaccine against the Zika virus has become an urgent priority for, among others, EU Commissioner for Research and Innovation Carlos Moedas, who has pledged an initial €10m into its research.
“I have instructed my services to mobilise €10m for urgently needed research on the Zika virus in response to the upsurge in cases of severe congenital brain malformations across Latin America and their suspected link to Zika virus infections,” Moedas said.
The money contributed by the EU will come from Horizon 2020 for investment in diagnostics and experimental drug candidates research. At least three pharmaceutical companies, including French giant Sanofi, have also announced their commitment to tackling the mosquito-borne virus.
Following criticism for a slow response regarding the Ebola outbreak of 2014, for which the EU pledged around €25m, the World Health Organization declared the Zika outbreak a global public health emergency and anticipates infection of up to four million people in the South and central American regions so far this year.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) declares that the risk in the EU of transmission remains extremely low: ‘There is no evidence of transmission Zika virus in Europe to date and imported cases are rare’, its website states.
There are currently five invasive Aedes mosquito species known to be established in Europe, namely Aedes albopictus, Aedes aegypti, Aedes japonicus, Aedes atropalpus and Aedes koreicus. A rapid risk assessment compiled by the ECDC can be found here.
The post WHO warning prompts fast EU action appeared first on Horizon 2020 Projects.
A two-day conference has begun in Brussels, Belgium, to explore and demonstrate how European research can support policy makers in designing effective and sustainable migration policies.
The Directorate General for Research and Innovation is hosting the event, which will showcase and debate past and current research on migration, including on integration, circular migration, migration and development, and data and statistical modelling.
Findings from social sciences and economic research will also feature at the conference, alongside the short to long term healthcare needs of migrants and the link between climate change and current and future migratory processes.
Also presented will be the Science4Refugees initiative, which is designed to identify and provide opportunities for refugees with scientific qualifications within the European Research Area.
Participants include leading researchers in the field of migration, many of them co-ordinators of EU-funded research projects, and EU and national policy makers, including Research and Innovation Director General Robert-Jan Smits and Research Commissioner Carlos Moedas.
In his keynote address, Moedas set out the importance of the research and innovation community in helping societies adjust to new trends in migration: “I need not explain the immensity or the complexity of the task before us. People are fleeing conflict. They are fleeing cities that have been razed to the ground. They are fleeing torture and persecution. Many have endured those who trade on human life … Therefore we must wake up,” he said.
“It is my firm belief that Europe’s researchers, scientists and innovators will be essential on that journey, because this is not a problem that can simply be ‘solved’. This is not a crisis that will simply come to an ‘end’. This is the new reality of the world we live in today, a reality we can only make better with decisions based on sound research and human compassion.”
You can watch the event live here today. Go here to watch tomorrow.
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Some 185 SMEs from 26 countries have been selected for funding under Phase 1 of the latest round of the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument.
A total of 1,284 SMEs have now been selected under Phase 1 of the programme since its launch on 1 January 2014.
The European Commission had received 2,057 proposals under Phase 1 by 25 November 2015, the fourth and last cut-off date for that year. A total of 175 projects will be funded (multiple SMEs can be involved in one project), bringing the success rate of funded proposals up to 8.4%.
The winning projects will each be given €50,000 in order to finance feasibility studies for new products that can disrupt the market. Participants will also receive three days of free business coaching.
Most of the projects funded were in the area of low carbon energy systems, followed by food production and processing, and biomarkers and medical devices.
Spanish SMEs proved the most successful with 39 beneficiaries accepted for funding, and then firms from Italy (37) and the UK (20).
The results for Phase 2 of the SME Instrument, where companies receive funding of up to €2.5m to make their products ready for the market, will follow around mid-February.
The next cut-off for Phase 1 is 24 February.
Go here for a full list of beneficiaries.
The post 185 SMEs selected for SME Instrument funding appeared first on Horizon 2020 Projects.
Some 185 SMEs from 26 countries have been selected for funding under Phase 1 of the latest round of the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument.
A total of 1,284 SMEs have now been selected under Phase 1 of the programme since its launch on 1 January 2014.
The European Commission had received 2,057 proposals under Phase 1 by 25 November 2015, the fourth and last cut-off date for that year. A total of 175 projects will be funded (multiple SMEs can be involved in one project), bringing the success rate of funded proposals up to 8.4%.
The winning projects will each be given €50,000 in order to finance feasibility studies for new products that can disrupt the market. Participants will also receive three days of free business coaching.
Most of the projects funded were in the area of low carbon energy systems, followed by food production and processing, and biomarkers and medical devices.
Spanish SMEs proved the most successful with 39 beneficiaries accepted for funding, and then firms from Italy (37) and the UK (20).
The results for Phase 2 of the SME Instrument, where companies receive funding of up to €2.5m to make their products ready for the market, will follow around mid-February.
The next cut-off for Phase 1 is 24 February.
Go here for a full list of beneficiaries.
The post 185 SMEs selected for SME Instrument funding appeared first on Horizon 2020 Projects.
A new cutting-edge plasma physics facility backed by the Horizon 2020 Euratom programme was yesterday inaugurated in Germany.
The Wendelstein7-X ‘stellarator’ was completed at the end of 2015 by the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik with a €1bn investment, to which Euratom contributed around 20%, and is intended to reinforce Europe’s leading role in international research on fusion energy.
On the day of the inauguration, which was attended by Research and Innovation Director General Robert-Jan Smits as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the stellarator successfully produced its first hydrogen plasma since operations began in December.
During this process, the containment of the super-hot plasma is achieved via a specially optimised magnetic field produced by a complex array of superconducting coils. This stellarator containment method – in which the magnetic field needed to confine the hot plasma is produced solely by coils external to the fusion plasma – differs from the ‘tokamak’ concept employed at ITER, the world’s largest fusion experiment currently under construction at the Cadarache facility, France.
The stellarator’s completion will enable researchers to investigate, for the first time, the true viability of the stellarator confinement method to complement the research on tokamaks and is considered crucial if Europe is to retain its technological leadership in the field of fusion energy.
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The European Investment Fund (EIF) and Raiffeisenbank Bulgaria have agreed to increase funding for innovative Bulgarian SMEs. Supported by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the loan to Raiffeisenbank comes as part of Horizon 2020’s InnovFin initiative and will allow the Bulgarian branch of the international Raiffeisenbank to provide €35m of loans to innovative companies in the country over a two-year period.
Commission Vice-President for Budget and Human Resources Kristalina Georgieva said: “For the second time in less than half a year, Bulgaria taps into the guarantee provided under the Investment Plan, this time for €35m. This agreement is again for what matters the most – support for SMEs which create most of the new jobs in Europe. I commend this proactivity and wish all the success to the companies that will take advantage of this opportunity.”
The EIB (European Investment Bank) Group has here shown commitment and a swift response to calls from member states, the Commission and the European Parliament for the promotion and launch of initiatives under EFSI. Sustainable EU jobs, growth and innovation have been among the focal points of the Juncker Commission and the Horizon 2020 framework programme.
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The European Research Council (ERC) and the OAPEN Foundation yesterday announced their co-operation in furthering Open Access to academic books and book chapters.
With the help of an ERC grant OAPEN will develop a tailormade deposit service for ERC grantees and their publishers.
The OAPEN library provides a platform for the full-text dissemination of Open Access books from all scientific areas, particularly in social sciences and humanities. As part of the new project funded by the ERC, OAPEN will provide guidance and support to ERC grantees and their publishers to comply with ERC Open Access requirements for books. It will aggregate and allow the deposit of Open Access monographs and book chapters based on ERC-funded research, provide quality assurance and dissemination of deposited publications, and ensure their digital preservation.
“Since 2014 Open Access is not an option for new ERC grantees, it’s a legal obligation,” said Martin Stokhof, chair of the ERC’s Scientific Council Working Group on Open Access. “The agreement with OAPEN helps scientists, who benefit from our funding, make their publications freely accessible online regardless of whether they are obliged to do it by their grant agreements or they wish to follow the ERC’s strong recommendation.”
Eelco Ferwerda, director of the OAPEN Foundation, added: “We are delighted to work with the European Research Council to provide our deposit service for Open Access books. The ERC emphasises the need for Open Access to peer-reviewed monographs and edited collections, and we hope our partnership will help to accelerate the transition to Open Access for books.”
The new agreement reaffirms the ERC’s commitment to Open Access and to ensuring that the fruits of the research it funds can be freely accessed, read and used, both by scientists and by the public. Similar agreements have been already signed with key Open Access repositories in Life Sciences (Europe PubMed Central) and physical sciences and engineering (arXiv), covering most scientific domains and publication formats.
Under Horizon 2020, beneficiaries of ERC grants must deposit, in a suitable Open Access repository, the published version or final accepted manuscript of any peer-reviewed scientific publication relating to the results of their funded research. This includes peer-reviewed monographs and book chapters. Publications have to be deposited as soon as possible and at the latest upon publication. Open Access must be ensured within six months of publication; for publications in social sciences and humanities a delay of up to 12 months is acceptable.
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NUI Galway’s Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI) has launched AUTOSTEM, a new €6m research project which aims to develop pioneering manufacturing systems for stem cell therapy.
Funded under Horizon 2020, AUTOSTEM is designed to help meet the demand for new disease therapies by transforming the way stem cells are manufactured.
Stem cell therapies have the potential to target a range of diseases, including cancers, diabetic complications and arthritis. But current manufacturing protocols are relatively inefficient and require highly skilled teams of technicians operating in a clean-room environment. As clinical trials progress, efficient and high-throughput manufacturing remains a major challenge, with the risk that demand will exceed supply.
AUTOSTEM plans to develop a state-of-the-art robotic stem cell production factory, the StromalCellFactory, which will minimise manual operations while producing large batches of cell product in a closed, sterile environment. The process involves the extraction of adult stem cells from tissues such as bone marrow or fat followed by efficient purification and culture expansion in large-capacity bioreactors, finally packaging the product in a format ready for delivery to the patient.
AUTOSTEM will be led by Dr Mary Murphy, senior lecturer in regenerative medicine and principal investigator at REMEDI, who commented on its launch: “This is an exciting interdisciplinary project that will take us beyond the state-of-the-art in stem cell manufacturing. The outcome will be a highly automated and efficient production technology that will allow patients worldwide to benefit from efforts to develop stem cell therapies.”
Professor Frank Barry, REMEDI’s scientific director and the project’s technology leader, added: “This project will be game-changing and will lead to remarkable new efficiencies in manufacturing, making the entire process more industrially relevant and cost-effective.”
As well as REMEDI, essential contributions will be made by NUI Galway’s Centre for Cell Manufacturing Ireland; spin-out company Orbsen Therapeutics; the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology in Aachen, Germany; the University of Aston, UK; German company Zellwerk; Galway SME Crospon; the Tyndall Institute at University College Cork, Ireland; and the UK-based Cell Therapy Catapult research organisation.
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Professor of physics and director of the Artificial Quantum Materials Laboratory at the University of Arkensas, USA, Jak Chakhalian was selected as a quantum materials investigator for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in 2014. Now a revolutionary artificial version of graphene is set to lead to numerous faster, smaller and lighter electronic and optical applications based on the continually impressive ‘wonder material’.
“We’ve basically created the first artificial graphene-like structure with transition metal atoms in place of carbon atoms,” Chakhalian said. “This work opens the door to devices based on junctions of correlated electronic materials beyond our current semiconductor devices.”
Leading an international team of scientists, Chakhalian’s report, ‘Mott Electrons in an Artificial Graphene-like Crystal of Rare Earth Nickelate’, was published yesterday in Physical Review Letters, the journal of the American Physical Society.
Graphene, because it is composed of carbon, is more abundant in Nature than its predecessor silicone, meaning that after the establishment of technology suitable for the mass production of it, the total costs of electronic chip manufacture will decrease.
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