With the growing global demand for biological medicines to address new therapeutic areas, the BIOPURE project will deliver a step change in monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) purification through the implementation of radically new and disruptive technology to recover mAbs-products in the solid-state directly from cell-free culture fluids. BIOPURE promises to lower manufacturing and purchase of equipment costs with a smaller footprint. It simplifies logistic chains and enhances environmental sustainability by avoiding extensive use of chemicals, compared to the standard chromatography-based platforms. It opens the doors to new possibilities and biomedicines so far too challenging economically or technologically. As end result, the citizens will have access to a more affordable and diverse selection of new generation biomedicines. The proposed membrane-based technology has already been proved at the laboratory scale (TRL4) as a cheaper and easily scalable alternative to protein A chromatography for mAb purification. The next step is to demonstrate the generalized efficiency of the technology and scale it up to TRL6 through the design of a fully automatized prototype that will be operated continuously and capable of compliance with quality and regulations for biopharmaceutical productions. In addition to technological development, the new BIOPURE technology will be validated with real market players, leading to verifying the planned business model, the IPR management plan, and the associated financial planning included in the go-to-market strategy. By achieving the main objectives of BIOPURE, it is expected that the adoption of membrane-assisted method for mAb-products purification will provide a breakthrough advancement in terms of productivity efficiency via continuous manufacturing, and cost reduction via process intensification.

Water splitting for H2 production driven by solar energy is quite attractive while the current efficiency is very moderate due to both the extremely sluggish water oxidation half reaction and limited light harvesting (mostly UV-visible light). In addition, the separation of one product H2 from the other O2 during water splitting is very costly. The project is designed to address these challenges by i) utilizing the full solar spectrum (300-2500nm) instead of UV-visible light (300-700nm), ii) coupling water splitting with biomass-derivative oxidation to avoid water oxidation, iii) well combining solid Z-scheme UV-visible photocatalysis and Infrared-driven thermal catalysis, and iv) using a flow double tube reactor other than batch reactors, thus targeting to produce green H2 from both water and biomass with a high quantum yield of 60% . Furthermore the project will co-produce high-value chemicals with a high selectivity of >90%. In addition, the integration of low-cost and efficient catalysts with novel flow reactors will assure a continuous and efficient production of H2 and high-value chemicals. The entire process does not use fossil fuels nor produce CO2, thus a zero carbon-emission technology. Finally the system can be readily scaled up by numbering up the reactor modules. All these are built upon a multidisciplinary and international consortium with the global experts in photocatalysis, thermal catalysis, reactor engineering, product separation, simulation and social science. Therefore the scientific and technical challenges, as well as the environmental, societal and economic impacts will be fully addressed in the project. The proposed technology will typically benefit the EU economy by an innovative green H2 production process from water and biomass, heavily contributing to a low carbon society. In addition, the international team including members from Asia will facilitate the technology exploitation out of the EU, to further benefit the EU economy.

RM ROADMAP (Creating Framework Conditions for Research Management to Strengthen the European Research Area) will create a roadmap for the future of research management (RM) in Europe and a community to support its delivery. To enhance access to excellence, the overarching objective of RM ROADMAP is to identify and adapt the research management capital base of the EU, including the widening countries, of its current and future research management workforce to emerging needs to improve the EU's competitiveness and sustain its economic performance. The RM ROADMAP consortium is proposing a state-of-the-art pan-European network of research managers, supporting the establishment of strategic, cross-border partnerships between research managers in industry, Research Funding Organisations, higher education and research institutions. RM ROADMAP will connect existing European networks on a smart community platform which will enable an unprecedented co-creation process in research management in the world. This co-creation process will gather the existing communities and expand upon them to reach two main objectives: 1. create and inform a bottom-up consensus on the future of RM in a roadmap and 2. inform the community about existing training, networking, funding and mobility opportunities. RM ROADMAP consists of 8 partners: European Association Of Research Managers And Administrators (Belgium); HETFA Research Institute (Hungary); Nova University Lisbon (Portugal); Association Of European Science & Technology Transfer Professionals (Netherlands); Crowdhelix Limited (Ireland), The Cyprus Institute (Cyprus) and associated partners Janssen & Janssen and Una Europa (Belgium).

Problem: Cell and gene therapies (CGT) represent a breakthrough in the treatment of a wide range of conditions. However, limited global manufacturing capacity owing to a lack of scalability prevents CGT from becoming widely available to patients: therapies are prepared individually at central facilities in a series of complex open manual steps. Variability is high, and a uniform manufacturing process is lacking. Automated, standardized, quality-controlled, and decentralized processes are urgently needed to scale out CGT manufacturing, bring down costs and enable treatment for millions of patients. True automation requires an understanding of what are known as critical process parameters (CPPs). Currently, manufacturing of cell therapies is carried out over several days, with limited access to knowledge of CPPs, often obtained through intrusive sampling methods. Innovation: We aim to enable in-line continuous monitoring of key cell culture parameters during therapy manufacturing. To do this, we will create a self-contained instrument that connects miniaturized biosensor technologies to a novel bioreactor to allow automation of the entire cell therapy manufacturing process in a closed system. The device will accommodate a disposable, single-use sampling unit that will ultimately be adaptable to any bioreactor. Our platform will carry out continuous, automated, and closed monitoring of a set of well-defined CPPs, as indicators of the overall state of the cell culture. We will select and refine our parameters and establish optimal ranges, as predictors of process outcomes and product quality, based on prediction algorithms and digital twin analysis. This will allow continuous process monitoring, while greatly lowering costs and risks associated with manual sampling. Our first application will be in CAR T cell therapy production, but the advantages of automation with continuous monitoring will be further applied to other CGT product that involves culturing of cells.

Our society is experiencing an increasing lack of social tactile interactions, due in part to increased virtualisation and the growth of digital networks, and recently magnified by social distancing measures. Sadly, many people now feel like the society described in the 1990s science fiction movie Demolition Man, where physical contact was prevented and heavily sanctioned. The increased virtualisation of our social interactions feeds our hunger for touch, the lack of which can lead to profoundly negative consequences. Interpersonal touch grounds social relations between people, with distinct patterns of tactile interaction between parent-infant dyads, adult life-partners, friends, teachers and professional colleagues and acquaintances. Although touch is vital for how we feel and interact with our environments and is foundational for our emotional well-being, most haptic technologies have focused on functional aspects. All major haptics companies use touch to help users improve task completion, discriminate among shapes or textures, and grasp virtual objects. In contrast, social touch typically involves the stimulation of non-glabrous (hairy) parts of the skin while also affecting nociceptors (pain) and thermoreceptors (temperature). These C-tactile (CT) afferents underpin the experience of affective touch, and the pleasant sensations associated with social interactions such as caresses. Thus, current technology neither satisfy our need for touch, nor draw on recent progress in understanding social touch. Our ambition is to go beyond functional haptic technology and enable computer systems to intelligently create the experiences lost in the virtual transition. Those experiences include agency, bonding, and attachment. We will develop the next generation of touchless haptic technologies using neurocognitive models and a novel artificial intelligence (AI) framework. Without having physical contact, users will receive affective, social and cognitive touch sensations.