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The European Research Council (ERC) awards two ERC Advanced Grants to Helge Niemann (faculty of Geosciences and NIOZ), Raymond Schiffelers (UMC Utrecht),and Geert Kops (Hubrecht Institute). The grant, which is part of the Horizon Europe programme, gives the Utrecht researchers a chance to shape major projects that could lead to scientific breakthroughs.

About the laureates and projects

The NanoMare project will profoundly enhance our understanding of ocean microbe-nanoplastic interactions and nanoplastic inventories.

The role of microbes in the fate of nanoplastics in the marine realm (NanoMare)

Biogeochemist Helge Niemann, a senior research leader at NIOZ and professor for Microbial and Isotope Biogeochemistry at Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��, receives an ERC Advanced Grant of € 3.5 million for research into the ocean microbe-nanoplastic interactions and nanoplastic inventories. Niemann is intrigued by the transformation of important but ‘unconventional’ carbon substrates such as plastic, methane and oil, and their fate in aquatic (microbial) food web structures. An important part of these carbon substrates is formed by the nanoplastics. These plastic litter fragments with dimensions smaller than 1μm were only recently discovered in the marine realm. Due to their colloidal nature, nanoplastics may be dispersed throughout the ocean, potentially affecting all marine life.

“Through the NanoMare project, we will be the first to provide fundamentally new insights into nanoplastic degradation kinetics, nanoplastic-degrading microbes (including degradation pathways and genes), impacts of nanoplastics on the ocean’s microbiome, and the global prevalence and distribution of nanoplastics and their degradation products in the sea,” says Niemann.

“The NanoMare project will profoundly enhance our understanding of ocean microbe-nanoplastic interactions and nanoplastic inventories, with substantial implications for marine microbiology and other ocean science disciplines. Beyond the ocean, the results will also be important for the fields of hydrology and atmospheric physics.”

We can train T-cells to recognize and attack tumor cells.

AGTC: Nanoparticles for better gene therapy

The AGTC project (Advancing Gene Therapy Capabilities) marks a return from the start-up world to fundamental science. Within Nanocell Therapeutics, we developed nanoparticles capable of delivering genes to specific immune cells, the so-called T cells. This enables us to train these cells to recognize and attack tumor cells.

In AGTC, we equip these nanoparticles with a barcode. This allows us to track exactly where they go, whether the gene reaches the right location, and what the effect is. In doing so, we are building the next generation of gene therapy: powerful, safe, and precise. We approach this through three lines of research:

1. Smarter design – We test various nanoparticle variants to discover which ones work best.
2. Super-specific delivery – We experimentally explore the theoretical concept of superselectivity to create nanoparticles that deliver their payload exclusively to T cells.
3. Understanding T cells – We aim to uncover what happens inside a T cell after gene delivery, to deploy them even more effectively in the fight against cancer.

This grant enables us to use various cutting-edge imaging and DNA sequencing technologies in a range of human cells and tissue models to understand the shape of centromeres.

CENTROSHAPE

Geert Kops receives an ERC Advanced grant to study the structure of human centromeres, crucial regions of our chromosomes that ensure proper cell division. Mistakes in this process can lead to cancer, developmental disorders, or miscarriages. Kops and his colleagues will investigate the molecular events that shape centromeres during cell division, and what goes wrong in cancer cells.