The abundance of microplastics in the environment, and in water in particular, is a growing concern. Kosuth et al. (2018) showed that they were present in 81% of 159 drinking waters sampled across 14 countries. Both European Commission and EU Parliament have on-going investigations to enforce public policies to reduce the amount of microplastics released in the environment. Nestlé, as one of the many extensive users of plastics to protect and safely deliver goods, has been engaged in decreasing the environmental impact of its plastics and in ensuring that microplastics are absent from its products. In addition to policies tackling microplastic release in the environment, solutions are needed to remove those which are already present. MICROPLASTINE aims at designing low-cost reusable biodegradable gelatine hydrogels to remove microplastics from water. Our water remediation process is based on the ability of charged gelatine hydrogels to flocculate oppositely charged microplastic particles, leading to the formation of aggregates that quickly sediment under gravity and can then be separated from water. As the charge of our hydrogels is pH-sensitive, they can be easily recovered by changing the pH. Using static and dynamic scattering techniques, our detailed examination of hydrogel-microplastic association and of the structure of their aggregates will not only allow us to understand the role played by microstructure and surface chemistry, but also to optimise hydrogel structure and properties; thereby creating rapid aggregation processes. The same techniques will also allow us to investigate the aggregation reversibility, and subsequently design hydrogel regeneration and microplastic recovery processes to ensure the full reusability of our biodegradable flocculant. Model microplastic particles with well-defined shape, size, material and charge will be used, before the optimised flocculants are tested on weathered microplastic particles.

Thousands of chemicals contained in food packaging may potentially migrate into foods and result in consumer exposure. There is an increasing alarm about their potential toxicological effects since most of them lack data, while others (e.g. bisphenol A) have created significant debate because of their documented endocrine properties. This project, SafePack, aims to offer a publicly usable in silico strategy to establish rapidly and cost-efficiently the level of safety concern of packaging chemicals without animal toxicity testing. There has been already initiatives to screen packaging chemicals using in silico toxicology, but all of them use qualitative approaches, mainly mutagenicity predictions, suitable for hazard identification. However they do not provide information about hazard characterization (how much is needed for triggering a toxic effect) and even less about health risks. In toxicology, "the dose makes the poisons" and it is very important to address safety concern by balancing predicted toxicological alert with potential exposure as done in standard risk assessment. The SafePack project aims at a) fill the toxicological data gaps of large sets of packaging chemicals using computational tools to predict toxicities, b) compare predicted toxicological values with exposure to obtain Margins of Exposure (MoE), a powerful method to establish level of safety concern, c) implement the overall workflow in freely available VEGA platform to make it ready for free utilization. Thousands packaging chemicals will be compiled. A number of toxicity endpoints relevant for risk assessment will be sequentially screened using available in silico predictive models: mutagenicity, carcinogenic potency and chronic toxicity; also, endocrine activity and developmental toxicity will be covered. The quantitative predicted values will be compared to exposure estimates providing MoEs, the size of which determines the level of safety concern.

Food allergies affect over 17M people in Europe and increasing at a 2 digit prevalence rate. With no cure, the only successful method to prevent allergic reactions is to strictly avoid all foods containing the allergen. Hence, to identify these, the consumers rely on an accurate product labelling.The labelling of allergen contents for the industry is however not trivial, it does not only depend on the composition of the product, but also on the possible cross-contamination with allergens from other products. The current lack of standardized food allergen control plans and cost-effective allergen testing tools, drives food manufacturers to adopt over cautious labelling strategies. As a result, 90% of products with ¨may contain¨ allergen labels do not contain any. This reduces the choice of safe food for the allergic population (39.1M people), leading to a risk taking behaviour. SaPher project will disrupt the food allergen assessment market thanks to the development of an allergen assessment procedure supported by the industrialization and commercial deployment of our full automatic SaPher nano-photonics biosensing allergen test platform. SaPher will simultaneously assess up to 6 different allergens in food matrices, reducing turnaround times and cost by over 70% in comparison with current golden standards. To reach market, we will elaborate a standardized risk assessment method (DTU), develop the antibodies of interest not comercially available in the market for the target industries (INGE), industrialize and optimise our technology for mass production (LUME and UPV) and demonstrate both technology and procedure with the meat, dairy and bakery industries (NESTLE) as well as independent laboratories under operational conditions. As a result, we expect SaPher to be adopted by large and medium food producing companies and external laboratories, ensuring products are correctly labelled on allergen contents by performing over 1,1 Million allergen tests in 3 years.

Despite improved treatment, diabetes remains a chronic disease with major health risks and heavy burden on patients and society. Serious forms are caused by depletion in pancreatic beta cells and associated loss in insulin’s homeostatic control throughout life. Their cure requires restoration of a metabolically adequate beta cell mass. Implants of beta cell grafts prepared from human pancreases have shown proof-of-principle but also the need for developing a large-scale source for therapeutic cells. Our objective is to generate a functional beta cell mass by stem cell-derived implants in diabetes patients. A combined preclinical and clinical project will search recipient and implant conditions for formation and maturation of beta cells in subcutaneous implants of device-encapsulated pancreatic endodermal cells that are derived from human embryonic stem cells (hu-ES) and manufactured for clinical studies. We collected preclinical evidence for the therapeutic potential of this implant from comparison with clinically used human beta cell grafts. State-of-the art methods and markers have been developed to investigate the biology of implants and to monitor host immune and innate reactivity. This approach helps understand the basis for metabolic outcome and identify targets for improvement. Pilot studies examine the influence of the (auto)immune status of the patients. Data will determine transition to clinical efficacy studies, or indicate the need for further laboratory development. Implants in preclinical models will guide modifications in clinical protocols, and explore the biologic properties of grafts derived from human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSc) as can also be prepared from diabetes patients. Our consortium joins innovating cells, methods, markers and minds in a unique combination of expert clinical, academic and industry activities that need each other to make progress in an ambitious program.

The overarching objective of TUSAIL is to train 15 creative, entrepreneurial and innovative Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in developing, applying and validating novel methodologies for upscaling of particulate systems across the length-scales and this way to help advance the innovation capacity in European industry. Training and research of the ESRs will be structured involving multiple disciplines (physics, engineering, informatics and mathematics), internationally covered by all partners, and involving state-of-the-art research and transferable, intersectoral skills from both academia and industry. This will deliver a cohort of experts in upscaling techniques able to eliminate industry’s reliance on traditional, costly pilot plants and thereby enhance European competitiveness, reducing risks and saving valuable resources. The ambitious training goal will be completed by top-edge research in three research WPs that address three complementary methods to modernise upscaling with an overarching WP that combines calibration and validation, targeting applications in real-life industrial practice. The TUSAIL multidisciplinary team with top level academic institutions, complemented by leaders in the field from the nonacademic sector, will deliver ESRs with strongly enhanced career perspectives and the ability to address critical challenges in the field and at the same time strengthen Europe’s human capital base in R&I.