The incidence of Cardiovascular Disease (CD) claims worldwide 17.1 million lives a year, with an estimated 31% of all deaths globally and a EU cost of 139 billion euros. Up to 40% of all deaths occur among the elderly. In spite of all medical efforts, the 5-year mortality was reduced significantly less than that of malignant diseases. This highlights the urgent need to overcome the difficulties associated with present pharmacological therapies (i.e. drug instability, and unspecific targeting) by developing new ground-breaking therapeutic strategies that go far beyond any current regimens. New approaches for safe, efficient, and heart-specific delivery of therapeutics are strongly required. CUPIDO is envisioned to meet these critical needs by providing an unconventional and effective strategy based on nanoparticle-assisted delivery of clinically available and novel therapeutics to the diseased heart. In particular, CUPIDO will develop innovative bioinspired hybrid nanoparticles formulated as biologicals delivery, which are i) biocompatible and biodegradable, ii) designed for crossing biological barriers, and iii) guidable to the heart. A combination of multidisciplinary manufacturing and validation approaches will be employed, bringing the envisioned product beyond the currently available clinical and day-to-day management of CD individuals. Scale-up production, and respect of medical regulatory requirements will allow CUPIDO to deliver a final product for future late pre-clinical and clinical studies. Altogether, CUPIDO will foster the translation of nanomedical applications toward the cardiac field, which although still in its start, offers great potential to overcome the limitations associated to the currently pharmacological treatments.

The advancement of direct solar fuel technologies is key to provide a sustainable, secure energy supply for the EU and other global regions, and for the challenging-to-electrify aviation and maritime sectors. State-of-the-art technologies for solar fuel production (including natural photosynthesis) suffer from low solar-to-fuel conversion efficiency, low production rates and prohibitively high costs. Within the framework of SUN-PERFORM, we will address these critical limitations through an innovative biohybrid approach based on innovations in nanotechnology and synthetic biology. SUN-PERFORM aims to: 1) to develop artificial nanocrystal light-harvesting systems, to efficiently harvest a larger part of the solar light spectrum, 2) to generate advanced microalgal solar cell factories, by introducing synthetic pathways for a more efficient, rapid conversion of light energy and CO2 into lipid fuel precursors. Microalgal lipids are promising hydrocarbons for fuels, being already approved production pathways for Sustainable Aviation Fuel. However, current lipid production is still too inefficient and slow, hindering the cost-effective generation of renewable fuels. Through the implementation and integration of groundbreaking innovations at a pilot scale, SUN-PERFORM aims to achieve a remarkable four-fold increase in the existing solar-to-fuel efficiency. This will be demonstrated across two case studies reflecting the different solar irradiances received in Europe and Africa. In addition to technical advancements, SUN-PERFORM will comprehensively evaluate the sustainability, techno-economic and social aspects of this novel route, to guide its development as a truly sustainable, secure and affordable production platform. Diverse stakeholders, including industry and several partners in Africa, will be involved in SUN-PERFORM to support the global development and the European leadership and export position for solar fuel technology.

There is an increasing demand for advanced materials with temperature capability in highly corrosive environments for aerospace. Rocket nozzles of solid/hybrid rocket motors must survive harsh thermochemical and mechanical environments produced by high performance solid propellants (2700-3500°C). Thermal protection systems (TPS) for space vehicles flying at Mach 7 must withstand projected service temperatures up to 2500°C associated to convective heat fluxes up to 15 MWm-2 and intense mechanical vibrations at launch and re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The combination of extremely hot temperatures, chemically aggressive environments and rapid heating/cooling is beyond the capabilities of current materials. Main purpose of C3HARME is to design, develop, manufacture, test and validate a new class of out-performing, reliable, cost-effective and scalable Ultra High Temperature Ceramic Matrix Composites (UHTCMCs) based on C or SiC fibres/preforms enriched with ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) capable of in-situ repairing damage induced during operation in severe aerospace environments. C3HARME will apply to two main applications: near-ZERO erosion rocket nozzles that must maintain dimensional stability during firing in combustion chambers, and near-ZERO ablation thermal protection systems enabling hypersonic space vehicles to maintain flight performance. C3HARME represents a well-balanced mix of innovative and consolidated technologies, mitigating the level of risk intrinsic in top-notch research and innovation development. C3HARME starts from TRL of 3-4 and focuses on TRL 6 thanks to a strong industrial partnership, including SMEs and large companies. To reach TRL 6, rocket nozzles and TPS tiles with realistic dimensions and shape will be fabricated, assembled into a suitable system, and validated in a relevant ambient (environment centered test). Project results could be easily extended to the energy, medical and/or nuclear environments.

The C5 Pathfinder project aims to revolutionize the production of bio-based chemicals by leveraging synthetic compartmentalization and metabolic engineering within photosynthetic cyanobacterial systems. The multidisciplinary consortium brings together experts from diverse fields, including microbiology, synthetic biology, and chemical engineering, with the overarching goal to maximize cyanobacterial photosynthetic CO2 fixation and isoprene product generation. This will be achieved by installing a more efficient CO2 fixation cycle, connecting it directly with isoprene production to maximize carbon partitioning, and constructing a conceptual novel synthetic bacterial organelle, co-localizing selected enzymes. This promotes substrate channeling and creates a favorable microenvironment to enhance their catalytic activity while minimizing metabolic crosstalk with the cytosol and containing toxic intermediates. We will develop a process to directly harvest isoprene from the gas phase, which spontaneously separates from the cells and growth media. This avoids problematic biomass harvesting and product extraction, simplifying the production process. The project's success will be assessed through life cycle assessments (LCA) and techno-economic analyses (TEA) to ensure that the developed processes are both environmentally sustainable and economically viable. The collaboration among consortium members will facilitate knowledge transfer and technology development, leading to the creation of modular and scalable systems suitable for industrial applications. Additionally, workshops and outreach activities will be conducted to disseminate findings and promote engagement with stakeholders across the bioeconomy sector. Overall, C5 aims to introduce groundbreaking innovative technologies which will significantly increase Solar-to-Isoprene conversion efficiency and pave the way for the widespread adoption of bio-based chemicals, contributing to a sustainable and circular economy.

Current global warming, caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (in particular CO2), is expected to rise from 2.5°C to 4°C by the end of the century. Consequently, agriculture is faced with the urging needs of increasing CO2 sequestration, coping with adverse weather and disastrous events, (ie droughts, heat waves, fire and flooding) and feeding an ever-growing world population projected at 9.7 billion in 2050. Future crops must serve as more efficient carbon sinks to mitigate climate change, plus have higher resilience and productivity to feed the global population. Crop4Clima will develop first-of-a-kind canola and rapeseed lines able to assimilate 60% more CO2 through photorespiration, requiring 20% less amount of water, improving biomass/Ha and still maintaining high oil content values as required for canola derived products. No commercial crops of that kind exist. To reach such product, we will improve and bring to commercial use, a disruptive synthetic metabolic pathway, the TaCo pathway, which turns photorespiration into a CO2-fixing instead of a CO2-releasing process, leading to increased net carbon-uptake under agronomical standard and drought field conditions. Canola and rapeseed are major crops in EU and worldwide. Notably, our technology has commercial prospects to be introduced in other C3 crops such as soybean, cotton, rice and more, based on photosynthetic and genomic similarity. The success of the technology implementation in rapeseed will allow us to establish a start-up seed company aiming to produce and sell high oil seeds with low carbon footprint. In addition and in frame of the program we will develop an innovative business plan taking into considerations how the food value chain is evolving to cope with food supply and climate change signing a precommercial agreement with our industrial partners for the development of our engineered crops up to TRL9 and build trust on the solution proposed.