This project aims to develop new processes and solve bottlenecks in the fermentative production of biosurfactants and specialty carbohydrates. Specifically, the project targets the development of innovative fermentation processes to produce the following compounds: 1. Glycolipid biosurfactants. The project targets four distinct classes of biosurfactants, specifically rhamnolipids, sophorolipids, xylolipids and mannosylerythritol-lipids with a wide range of application fields. 2. Specialty carbohydrates. Specifically, the project targets sialylated oligosaccharides, a class of very complex Human Milk Oligosaccharides that find application as a neutraceutical, pharmaceutical and cosmetic ingredient. For both product lines, microbial producer strains will be developed through metabolic engineering. The fermentation process and down-stream processing will be developed and optimized in order to obtain an industrial process. Second generation technology based on lignocellulosic substrates will also be developed. Sufficient amounts of the new products will be produced for application testing, in order to evaluate their market potential in a wide range of application fields. The technical, economic, environmental and social sustainability of the process over the whole value chain from biomass to product application will also be assessed, with an emphasis on identifying and addressing the bottlenecks in the innovation chain. A valorisation plan will be drafted to complete the innovation process. The project consortium has all the required players to obtain the expected impact: RTO's to address the research challenges in this project, an open innovation pilot plant to optimize and scale up the new processes, three biotech SMEs and three large industries to ensure the exploitation of the project results. In addition, two user groups (one for each product line) consisting of end-user companies are involved in the project.

PRECIOUS aims at scaling-up biodegradable nanomedicines for multimodal precision cancer immunotherapy. With 3.5 million cancer patients in Europe every year, new cancer medicines are eagerly awaited, notably for prostate and ovarian cancer. Systemically applied new immunotherapies are promising, but their toxicity is a hurdle. Vaccination against cancer is safe but rather the efficacy can be disappointing, i.e. the microenvironment shuts down anti-tumour immunity. PRECIOUS will tackle 2 bottlenecks: 1. Production of non toxic multimodal nanomedicines, which induce vigorous immune responses, and at the same time reverse immunosuppression 2. Large scale GMP production of nanomedicines, and initiate a multimodal immunotherapy Phase I trial. We want to solve these bottlenecks by: Objective 1: Two types of GMP biodegradable nanoparticles: 1) a nanovaccine, containing tumour antigens and immune activators, and 2) a nanoparticle composed of compounds, which reverses the suppression and reactivates immunity in the tumour. Objective 2: Clinical Phase I trial to show efficacy. Nanomedicines will be used by 1) injection of vaccines to evoke immune responses and 2) injection of nanoparticles in the tumour microenvironment, which slowly release compounds that reverse suppression. To achieve this, a platform is formed with 6 leading industrial partners to produce large scale GMP nanomedicines and an excellent immunomodulator track record, together with 5 renowned academic partners to perform clinical studies. Relevance to call: Large scale GMP production, industrial leadership, nanotechnology and advanced manufacturing KET technologies, translation to the clinic, marketing development.

This proposal describes the third core project of the Graphene Flagship. It forms the fourth phase of the FET flagship and is characterized by a continued transition towards higher technology readiness levels, without jeopardizing our strong commitment to fundamental research. Compared to the second core project, this phase includes a substantial increase in the market-motivated technological spearhead projects, which account for about 30% of the overall budget. The broader fundamental and applied research themes are pursued by 15 work packages and supported by four work packages on innovation, industrialization, dissemination and management. The consortium that is involved in this project includes over 150 academic and industrial partners in over 20 European countries.

We will validate an affordable (28% reduction of total costs) and lightweight (35% weight reduction) solution for envelope insulation to bring existing curtain wall buildings to “nearly zero energy” standards while complying with the structural limits of the original building structure and national building codes. Two key commercial insulating products: • Highly insulating mono-component and environmentally friendly spray foam, EENSULATE foam, for the cost-effective automated manufacturing and insulation of the opaque components of curtain walls as well as for the significant reduction of thermal bridges during installation (SELENA and EVONIK in cooperation with ULSTER); • Lightweight and thin double pane vacuum glass, EENSULATE glass, for the insulation of the transparent component of curtain walls, manufactured through an innovative low temperature process using polymeric flexible adhesives and distributed getter technology, thus allowing to use both annealed and tempered glass as well as low emissivity coatings (AGC, SAES and TVITEC in cooperation with ULSTER and UNIVPM ). A multi-functional thermo-tunable coating will allow for dynamic solar gain control as well as anti-fogging and self-cleaning properties (AGC in cooperation with UCL). They will enable insulating solutions that Focchi, DAPP and Unstudio will promote with two different levels of performance: • EENSULATE Basic curtain wall modules where the thermal and acoustic insulation will be provided by the novel EENSULATE glass and EENSULATE foam in the spandrel combined with state of the art low-e coated glass; • EENSULATE Premium modules integrating the thermo-chromic coated glass with additional self-cleaning and anti-fogging functionalities. BGTEC will exploit the limited thickness and high insulating properties of the EENSULATE glass to introduce in their range innovative solutions for the fenestration challenges in historical buildings, compatible with the original window frames and sash designs.