Historically, one of the biggest challenges in synthetic organic chemistry has always been to synthesize fluoroarenes (Ar-F) and fluoroheteroarenes (Het-F) from cheap, readily available starting materials, as fluorination has always concerned synthetic chemists due to either undesirable safety of reagents, low selectivities or poor reactivities. Since fluoroaryl- (Ar-F) and fluoroheteroaryl- (Het-F) are the most common fluorinated motives among pharmaceuticals development of a completely novel synthetic strategy would be of great importance to the research community. De novo construction of fluorobenzene using C1F1 synthons is an unprecedented process. We foresee that little explored monofluorinated ortoformates (RO)3CF (FOFs) could be a synthetic equivalent to access C1F1 synthon for annulation reactions.

ShapeFuture will drive innovation in fundamental Electronic Components and Systems (ECS) that are essential for robust, powerful, fail-operational and integrated perception, cognition, AI-enabled decision making, resilient automation and computing, as well as communications, for highly automated vehicles. Its overarching vision is to bring ECS Innovation at the Heart of Europe's Mobility Transformation, thereby elevating Sovereignty by Perfecting Programmable ECS Solutions for Intelligent, Safe, Connected, and Highly Automated Vehicles. The project will result in the following main tangible outcomes: • Safety, security and reliability of in-vehicle systems to levels appropriate for mass-market deployment. • Availability and supply of leading-edge ECS for the European automotive supply chain and for OEMs to be at the forefront of technology developments in the 2030s. • Increased Accuracy and Robustness of ECS for perception with smaller form factors and lower power consumption. • ECS attributed with cognition features and improved human-Machine Interface (HMI). • ECS with cognitive processing and decision-making capabilities. • ECS for resilient automation and communications. • Increased technology acceptance that will also lead to business sovereignty safeguard. 15 demonstrators and 2 impact studies will showcase the project’s achievements and their capability to deliver innovations and secure future application advances in core markets for European society – Mobility, Green Deal, Digital Society, Safety and Industry. The project innovations will leverage the expertise of world-renowned industrial (5 OEMs, 24 Tier-1, Tier-2 and technology providers) and 12 research partners along the complete automotive and semiconductor value chains, providing Europe with a competitive edge in a growing market. Importantly, ShapeFuture will contribute to ensuring European ECS Sovereignty by shaping the future of ECS in mobility.

EU-OPENSCREEN (EU-OS), the European Research Infrastructure of Open Screening Platforms for Chemical Biology, builds a distributed organization of national screening and chemistry facilities, a common database, and a central headquarter that manages the joint compound collection and coordinates project flow and training. It provides world-class services to academia and industry in the fields of small molecule screening and medicinal chemistry. EU-OS developed its concept and business plan during the preparatory phase and has received information on the Commission Implementing Decision on setting up the EU-OS European Research Infrastructure Consortium (EU-OS-ERIC) in March 2018. In 2018, EU-OS will start its ERIC operations with seven founding members and one observer. EU-OS will promote the rich chemical knowledge of Europe and enabling systematic studies of the bioactivities of a larger collection of compounds leading to ground-breaking insights into cellular and organismal metabolic or signalling pathways. After careful consideration of IPR from all stakeholders involved, all results will eventually become available to the public. EU-OS will thereby also play an increasingly important role in facilitating the drug discovery process in Europe. In addition, it also has a great potential for innovative development of biomarkers and other diagnostics. By carefully considering the recommendations of the Long-term Sustainability Action Plan of the EC and ESFRI, EU-OS will utilize EU-OS-DRIVE to specifically promote measures for i) widening awareness of academia and industry for its services and data, ii) growing capacity and competence in its field across Europe, and iii) completing the management processes needed for a large distributed infrastructure. EU-OS-DRIVE will further help the EU-OS-ERIC to deliver its added-value via constant re-use of generated data and tools by users across the globe and to support the competitiveness of European life science industries.

The European Regimen Accelerator for Tuberculosis (ERA4TB) has the explicit goal of developing a new combination therapy to treat all forms of TB starting from ~20 leads and drug candidates provided by EFPIA. Since details of these are as yet unavailable, we will implement an agile drug development algorithm that entails profiling and portfolio construction. Profiling involves characterisation and ranking molecules in preclinical studies comprising in vitro drug combination assays, hollow fiber and single cell analysis, innovative murine and non-human primate models, PK/PD studies, combined with biomarker discovery and non-invasive NIR or PET/CT imaging to monitor disease progression and response to treatment. Modelling, simulation and artificial intelligence tools will help progress compounds from early preclinical to clinical development and to predict drug exposure, human doses and the best combinations. After extensive preclinical profiling, selected compounds will enter portfolio development for first time in human tests and phase I clinical trials in order to ensure that they are safe, well-tolerated and bioavailable with negligible drug-drug interactions. If needed, formulation studies will be conducted to improve pharmacological properties. ERA4TB has assembled the best expertise and resources available in Europe, to build a highly effective and sustainable drug development consortium with a flexible and dynamic management system to execute the profiling and portfolio strategy, aided by clearly defined go/no-go decision points. The expected outcome of ERA4TB is a series of highly active, bactericidal, orally available drugs to constitute two or more new combination regimens with treatment-shortening potential ready for Phase II clinical evaluation. These regimens will be compatible with drugs used to treat common comorbidities, such as HIV-AIDS and diabetes, and should impact UN Sustainable Development Goal 3, namely, ending TB by 2030.

R-PODID (Reliable Powerdown for Industrial Drives) aims to develop an automated, cloudless, short-term fault-prediction for electric drives, power modules, and power devices, that can be integrated into power converters. Thereby, electrical and mechanical faults of machines and of the power converters driving them will become predictable within a limited prediction horizon of 12-24h. This will enable a power-saving shutdown of a larger number of production machines during idle times, because a looming failure during the next power-on cycle can be reliably foreseen. It will also enable reliable mitigation of dangerous faults in applications using modern power-devices like silicon-carbide (SiC) and III/V-semiconductor devices like gallium-nitride (GaN).