ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

From testicular grafting (1920s) to step counting watches (2014), the perceptions and practices of health seeking individuals have been marked by continuities and profound changes during a twentieth century largely shaped by the advent of a communication society. Visuals can be a source to understand transformations by postulating an interactive, performative power of mass media in societies. Which roles did visuals play in changes from public health and human capital collective understandings of the healthy self to new (sometimes debated) perceptions and practices of our bodies as forms of individual capital in an increasing market-economized world? Pursuing these questions, the project focuses on four fields of investigation -food/nutrition; movement/exercise/sports; sexuality/reproduction/infants and dependency/addiction/overconsumption- in Germany, France and Great Britain studied with an entangled history framework. Within this scope the project aims at understanding (1)how visuals shape our health related self-understandings and practices in a continuity/discontinuity from the bio-political to the bio-economic logic. (2) The project will explore and explain how and why understandings of body capital differ or overlap in European countries. (3) The project will analyse if and how visual media serve as a promotion-communication hyphen for twentieth century preventive-self understanding. With a visual perspective on a long twentieth century, the project seeks to better understand changes and continuities in the history of health intertwined with the history of media. This will provide new insights into how the internalization of bodycapital has evolved throughout the past century, how transformations in the media world (from film to TV to internet) play out at the individual level and how health challenges and cultural differences in body perceptions and practices persist in producing social distinction in an age of global information and advanced health systems.

2 492 124 €

Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31

Tissue homeostasis requires coordinated barrier function in blood and lymphatic vessels. Opening of junctions between endothelial cells (ECs) lining blood vessels leads to tissue fluid accumulation that is drained by lymphatic vessels. A pathological increase in blood vessel permeability or lack or malfunction of lymphatic vessels leads to edema and associated defects in macromolecule and immune cell clearance. Unbalanced barrier function between blood and lymphatic vessels contributes to neurodegeneration, chronic inflammation, and cardiovascular disease. In this proposal, we seek to gain mechanistic understanding into coordination of barrier function between blood and lymphatic vessels, how this process is altered in disease models and how it can be manipulated for therapeutic purposes. We will focus on two critical barriers with diametrically opposing functions, the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and the lymphatic capillary barrier (LCB). ECs of the BBB form very tight junctions that restrict paracellular access to the brain. In contrast, open junctions of the LCB ensure uptake of extravasated fluid, macromolecules and immune cells, as well as lipid in the gut. We have identified novel effectors of BBB and LCB junctions and will determine their role in adult homeostasis and in disease models. Mouse genetic gain and loss of function approaches in combination with histological, ultrastructural, functional and molecular analysis will determine mechanisms underlying formation of tissue specific EC barriers. Deliverables include in vivo validated targets that could be used for i) opening the BBB on demand for drug delivery into the brain, and ii) to lower plasma lipid uptake via interfering with the LCB, with implications for prevention of obesity, cardiovascular disease and inflammation. These pioneering studies promise to open up new opportunities for research and treatment of neurovascular and cardiovascular disease.

2 499 969 €

Start date: 2019-07-01, End date: 2024-06-30

We shall develop a microfluidic and microsystems toolbox allowing the construction and study of complex cellular assemblies (“tissue or organ mimics on chip”), in a highly controlled and parallelized way. This platform will allow the selection of specific cells from one or several populations, their deterministic positioning and/or connection relative to each other, yielding functional assemblies with a degree of complexity, determinism and physiological realism unavailable to current in vitro systems We shall in particular develop “semi-3D” architectures, reproducing the local 3D arrangement of tissues, but presenting at mesoscale a planar and periodic arrangement facilitating high resolution stimulation and recording. This will provide biologists and clinicians with new experimental models able to bridge the gap between current in vitro systems, in which cells can be observed in parallel at high resolution, but lack the highly ordered architecture present in living systems, and in vivo models, in which observation and stimulation means are more limited. This development will follow a functional approach, and gather competences and concepts from micr-nano-systems, surface science, hydrodynamics, soft matter and biology. We shall validate it on three specific applications, the sorting and study of circulating tumour cells for understanding metastases, the creation of “miniguts”, artificial intestinal tissue, for applications in developmental biology and cancerogenesis, and the in vitro construction of active and connected neuron arrays, for studying the molecular mechanisms of Alzheimer, and signal processing by neuron networks. This platform will also open new routes for drug testing, replacing animal models and reducing the health and economic risk of clinical tests, developmental biology , stem cells research. and regenerative medicine.

2 260 000 €

Start date: 2013-07-01, End date: 2018-06-30

Photosynthesis emerged as an energy-harvesting process at least 3.5 billion years ago, first in anoxygenic bacteria and then in oxygen-producing organisms, which led to the evolution of complex life forms with oxygen-based metabolisms (e.g. humans). Oxygenic photosynthesis produces ATP and NADPH, and the correct balance between these energy-rich molecules allows assimilation of CO2 into organic matter. Although the mechanisms of ATP/NADPH synthesis are well understood, less is known about how CO2 assimilation was optimised. This process was essential to the successful phototrophic colonisation of land (by Plantae) and the oceans (by phytoplankton). Plants optimised CO2 assimilation using chloroplast-localised ATP-generating processes to control the ATP/NADPH ratio, but the strategies developed by phytoplankton are poorly understood. However, diatoms—ecologically successful ocean organisms—are known to control this ratio by exchanging energy between plastids and mitochondria. Is this mechanism a paradigm for optimisation of photosynthesis in the ocean? The ChloroMito project aims to first decipher the mechanism(s) behind plastid-mitochondria interactions. Thanks to a novel combination of whole-cell approaches, including (opto)genetics, cellular tomography and single-cell spectroscopy, we will identify the nature of the exchanges occurring in diatoms and assess their contribution to dynamic responses to environmental stimuli (light, temperature, nutrients). We will then assess conservation of this mechanism in ecologically relevant phytoplankton taxa, test its role in supporting different lifestyles (autotrophy, mixotrophy, photosymbiosis) encountered in the ocean, and track transitions between these different lifestyles as part of an unprecedented effort to visualise ocean dynamics. Overall, the ChloroMito project will alter our understanding of ocean photosynthesis, challenging textbook concepts which are often inferred from plant-based concepts

2 498 207 €

Start date: 2020-01-01, End date: 2024-12-31