A proposal by member states to reduce next year’s research budget by almost half a billion euros will have “detrimental effects”, according to Romanian MEP and budget rapporteur Siegfried Mureşan.
In May the European Commission proposed a budget of €160.6bn for 2018. The council responded in July, asking for a €1.7bn reduction.
Under the council’s budget proposal, research would suffer the biggest losses.
Mureşan said: “Despite being a widely shared priority programme and a highly successful one, Horizon 2020 is the [worst] hit.”
Other cuts proposed by the council include €46m from the Galileo and Egnos satellite navigation programmes, €33m from the ITER nuclear fusion project and €20m from the Copernicus Earth observation programme.
Mureşan warned the cuts would put a number of ongoing research projects at risk, including the creation of new knowledge and innovation communities by the European Institute of Technology. Companies could withhold investment “if the EU budget fails to match it,” he added.
Cuts to nuclear research “would [also] prevent the Joint Research Centre (JRC) from paying the salaries of its staff,” Mureşan said.
The parliament must now conclude its review in time for all three institutions to reach a final agreement by 20 November.
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Projeler
ProQR Therapeutics has announced that dosing of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients in its Phase 1b clinical trial of QR-010 has been completed.
The PQ-010-001 study is a Phase 1b, 28-day, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled safety and tolerability trial, conducted in patients that have CF.
A total of four dose levels were studied: 6.25, 12.5, 25 and 50mg of QR-010 in solution per dose administered via inhalation. The study design consisted of eight cohorts of eight patients for a total of 64 patients. In each cohort, six patients received QR-010 and two patients received placebo. In cohorts one to four, a single dose of QR-010 was administered, and in cohorts five to eight 12 doses of QR-010 were administered over a four-week period.
The Phase 1b study is a first-in-human trial designed to primarily assess safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics of QR-010. A number of exploratory efficacy endpoints are also being assessed including sweat chloride, weight gain, change in CFQ-R Respiratory Symptom Score and FEV1.
Noreen Henig, chief medical officer at ProQR, said: “QR-010 has the potential to be an innovative RNA [ribonucleic acid] therapy for patients with CF due to the F508del mutation. Completion of the Phase 1b study is an important step in development, and builds upon the preclinical data and positive PQ-010-002 study where QR-010 demonstrated a direct effect on restoring CFTR function.
“We are grateful to the patients and the medical community who participated in this early trial. ProQR is committed to creating meaningful RNA therapies for patients with CF.”
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The ITERAMS project is to reinvent water and waste in mining by developing new methods to allow the EU to be at the forefront of minimal waste, minimal energy and minimal water consumption in the mining sector.
The ITERAMS (Integrated Mineral Technologies for More Sustainable Raw Material Supply) project aims to significantly reduce water consumption by circulating process waters and reducing the amount of tailings waste through valorisation of the mineral matrix. The project focuses on the complete isolation of process waters from the adjacent water systems.
This will require the development of new methods for optimising and controlling water qualities at each process step.
The project develops new holistic water and waste concepts and systems, which will result in higher technical, economic and environmental performance in raw materials production.
The developed ITERAMS water and waste efficient concepts are jointly validated by industrial and research partners at their mine sites. Three sites at Boliden (Finland), Somincor (Portugal) and Anglo American (Chile or South Africa) were selected to validate the results in various conditions, for example in a number of mineralogical and geographical areas. Information from laboratory tests, process assessment and technology validation was used for the development of the water recycling testing protocol.
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is acting as the co-ordinator of the EU-funded three-year ITERAMS project.
The project will end on 31 May 2020 and has a total budget of €7.9m.
The consortium is multidisciplinary, covering the disciplines of geology, mining, minerals processing, microbiology, thermodynamics, chemistry, water and environmental sciences, sustainability, process modelling and simulation in close co-operation between academia and industry.
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Switzerland has regained full participation in two EU-funded innovation programmes which had been postponed following negotiations over a 2014 vote on immigration from the EU.
The Swiss government approved the country’s participation in the Eurostars-2 and Active and Assisted Living (AAL) programmes, both co-funded under the Horizon 2020 research initiative.
Eurostars-2 and AAL are designed for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that invest more than 10% of their revenues into research and development and are looking to gain access to new European or global markets. AAL makes up part of the Swiss government’s skilled workers initiative that seeks to develop the country’s workforce.
The agreement approved is retroactive to the beginning of 2017 and will allow Switzerland to once again play an active role in determining how Eurostars-2 and AAL funds are spent. It also releases funds from Horizon 2020 for additional projects with Swiss partners. The country has been one of the most active participants in the two programmes with 231 Swiss projects having received funding through Eurostars-2 and 82 through AAL between 2008 and 2016.
Switzerland regained partial access to Horizon 2020 at the beginning of this year after ratifying the free movement of people accord with Croatia. The ratification was a condition from the EU for Switzerland’s renewed access to the research funds.
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Aurelius Environmental and Dr Vasant Kumar from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy (DMSM) have won a grant worth over €1.3m to develop a novel hydrometallurgical process.
With the University of Cambridge as a partner and sub-contractor, Aurelius has been awarded the grant money under the Horizon 2020 programme. Aurelius has received licensing support from Cambridge Enterprise, the university’s commercial arm.
Dr Athan Fox, technology director, said: “We believe in a fully sustainable business, where waste streams enter our processes and nothing but products leave; where multiple recycling infrastructures complement each other – one stream’s waste being another stream’s in-feed. Our journey towards this vision begins here, with a technology poised to revolutionise the recycling of lead-acid batteries.”
CEO Miles Freeman says that the recycling of used lead-acid batteries is turning the corner to a “greener, cleaner and more sustainable process”.
“With the advent of new electrolysis-based processes coming from the US and still under development within the EU, a new recycling era dawns. There is indeed the need for improvements in quality of secondary lead and for continued advancement in lead-acid battery technology to meet the ever-increasing demand for advanced electrochemical storage capacity,” said Freeman.
Industrialisation and commercialisation of the process is currently nine months into its development and a full-scale production capacity plant is expected to be operating by early 2018.
Fox added: “The key advantages of our hydrometallurgical process include a reduction in the carbon footprint – compared to smelting – by over 80%; virtually zero emissions of noxious gases like SO2 and NO2; and lead oxide produced directly from waste batteries.
“By producing lead oxide directly from spent batteries, we are effectively eliminating the need to oxidise lead ingot or to source lead metal from the open market.”
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Nokia has launched the 5G Mobile Network Architecture (MoNArch) research project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme.
13 partners participating in the project will be led by Nokia and aim to implement the fifth generation of mobile networks, as well as to establish a number of real-world testing scenarios, furthering the advancement of emerging technology.
The project will place a focus upon network slicing and its application in industries, including healthcare and entertainment, the Finnish technology company said.
The approach to network management is thought to be an efficient use of Nokia’s software knowledge, favouring logical sectorisation over physical solutions, and subsequently creating numerous logical networks within a single physical entity.
It is anticipated that network slicing will be a popular technique utilised by mobile service providers, meaning that telecommunications equipment provided by manufacturers also needs to advance.
Nokia’s partners involved in 5G MoNArch come from six European countries with varying backgrounds. The consortium is supported by continental divisions of Samsung and Huawei, as well as Deutsche Telekom, Atos and Mobics.
The initiative hopes to evolve current architectural design. There would be a consequent facilitation for the advancement of network technologies, including pursuing functional solutions which would improve the security, flexibility and resilience of 5G technologies.
MoNArch will experiment with real-world 5G implementations over the duration of two years, operating with a budget of €7.7m.
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The Swiss government on Wednesday (23 June) approved accords enabling Swiss researchers to participate in two projects co-funded by H2020, representing the country’s resumption of participation.
Eurostars-2 provides small and medium-sized technology and digital businesses with the opportunity to collaborate with European researchers, the government said in a statement.
A secondary project – Active and Assistive Living (AAL) – aims to develop solutions to enable elderly people to maintain an active and independent life.
Switzerland’s participation in the project forms part of an initiative which aims to combat the shortage of qualified workers.
Wednesday’s accords allowed Switzerland to regain full membership to the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, a seven-year €80bn research and innovation programme.
Their participation has been limited since 2014, when the country voted in favour of anti-immigration measures which would have contravened a free movement agreement with the EU.
In a counteractive effort, Brussels froze funds for Swiss scientists, and despite substitutions from Swiss government, the country’s participation in Horizon 2020 was reduced significantly.
In December 2016, the government decided against full implementation of the anti-immigration initiative and, as a result, enabled it to retain free movement. Subsequently, Switzerland has met the conditions for re-acceptance into Horizon 2020.
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Researchers in Sweden have identified a number of drug targets that can be used in the development of new efficient treatment strategies for fatty liver disease and liver cancer with minimum side effects.
KTH the Royal Institute of Technology’s Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) research centre and Gothenburg University employed the biological networks generated for 46 major human tissues in order to identify the liver-specific gene targets.
The researchers mapped the metabolic changes caused by accumulated fat in liver cells, and combined this data with an analysis of biological networks of liver and other human tissues.
Doing so enabled them to identify the liver-specific drug targets whose inhibition will not cause any side effect to other human tissues, said lead author Adil Mardinoglu.
Mardinoglu added that the team’s network modelling approach, which relied on data from the Sweden-based Human Protein Atlas project and The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project consortia, can be used in the identification of drug targets and eventually in the development of efficient strategies for treating a number of chronic liver diseases.
The researchers identified liver-specific genes linked to NAFLD pathogenesis, such as pyruvate kinase liver and red blood cell, (PKLR), or to HCC pathogenesis, such as PKLR, patatin-like phospholipase domain containing 3 (PNPLA3) and proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9), all of which are potential targets for drug development.
Mathias Uhlen, director of the Human Protein Atlas project and co-author of the paper, said: “I am extremely pleased that the resource created through the Human Protein Atlas effort has been used in the analysis of clinical data obtained from liver disease patients and that this analysis has led to the identification of liver-specific drug targets that can be used for treatment of this clinically important patient group.”
The research has been published in Molecular Systems Biology, an EMBO press journal.
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Partners of the Cimulact (Citizen and Multi-Actor Consultation on Horizon 2020) project, recently met at the University of Malta’s Valletta campus to discuss the future impact of citizens’ visions.
Between October 2015 and February 2016, workshops were held in the 30 participating countries, in which 1,500 people attended. The result presented 170 visions, which were later processed and clustered.
Various meetings were subsequently held, including an additional workshop in each country and a pan-European conference, which was attended by experts and European Commission programme officers.
Based on the issues that the participants had raised, 23 research topics and 40 policy recommendations emerged from this process. These reflected citizens’ expectations, desires and concerns for the future of Europe.
The 23 topics address the different challenges that European citizens face in their everyday lives, and specify how research may address these challenges. These include, for example, how to ensure equal and holistic health services for all; how to develop evidence-based personalised healthcare; how education can be a platform for social innovation and local development; and how to achieve smarter consumption.
The project is based on the premise that open science is not just about making science available to people, it is also about engaging people in setting the direction for research.
During the meeting in Malta, participants also discussed ways to increase citizen participation as a source of information for research, regularly solicit citizen feedback on projects and increase participatory practices.
Professor Sandra Dingli from the University of Malta’s Edward de Bono Institute, who hosted the meeting, said: “It is interesting to see that three future visions generated and prioritised by Maltese citizens clearly address some of the European Commission’s grand challenges, in particular those related to the environment, health and wellbeing.”
Funded by the European Commission and co-ordinated by the Danish Board of Technology (DBT) Foundation in Copenhagen, Denmark, the project aims to bridge the gap between citizens and policy makers.
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Software funded by the EU to help immigrants access healthcare services in European countries has been tested for the first time in Spanish health centres.
Researchers received €3.6m to develop the software, which can be used on laptops and tablets to respond to users’ questions in their native language, or to interpret hand gestures or facial expressions – and then explain what they mean.
The software is tailored to target immigrants from the Middle East and north Africa.
Leo Wanner, the researcher leading the KRISTINA project, said: “Migrants who arrive in European countries may not be familiar with the health system at all.
“Our agent would be able to assess their problem based on their age, location, gender, and other things – so it can tell them in natural language where they need to go.”
The programme reminds patients about medical check-ups and vaccinations.
The software was tested this summer in Barcelona and Tarragona, Spain.
A second prototype of the KRISTINA project focuses on elderly Turkish immigrants and Polish health aides in Germany. The software can have conversations in German and Turkish and share tips on managing dementia and eating healthy food.
Wanner said the software tailors its assistance once it gets to know users.
“If we have an elderly person greet the virtual agent in a bit of a depressed voice in the morning, it will recognise that and ask what is wrong. It will ask if they slept poorly or look for anything it can do to cheer them up. For example, it might remind them their family are coming to visit later that afternoon,” he said in comments to Horizon magazine.
The KRISTINA project’s researchers said the software could be a way to improve health treatment and bring down costs for EU countries’ healthcare systems.
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