Research on immune system response and low-cost energy storage awarded ERC grants

Anthal Smits (Department of Biomedical Engineering)

Anthal Smits, who is an Assistant Professor in the Soft Tissue Biomechanics and Tissues Engineering group in the department of Biomedical Engineering, has big plans for the future of implant technologies with his ERC-funded project MACxercise.

“The demand for sophisticated medical implants is exponentially growing, but the main challenge with implants is ensuring that the body’s immune system rapidly accepts an implant, rather than rejecting it outright,” says Smits. “And in this research project, we’ll use the immune response to our advantage!”

Smits plans to make implants from bioresorbable synthetic biomaterials that are gradually replaced with living tissue inside the body, but key to the project is getting help from immune cells known as macrophages. “Macrophages are the gatekeepers to the successful integration of implants. The plan is to harness their immune response that will lead to certain biochemical and microstructural changes.”

Macrophage tennis

Normally, macrophages are studied under static-like laboratory conditions, but in the body, these cells are subject to forces and movements due to breathing, heartbeat, and body movement. “I’m keen to know which forces and movements most affect the macrophages,” Smits adds.

To explain further, Smits presents an analogy involving painting and tennis. “Suppose you’re a great painter. However, would you still be able to paint a great picture while playing tennis at the same time? In this project, we’ll place macrophages on the tennis court so we can study their behavior under life-like conditions. So, the project acronym MACxercise is short for ‘macrophage exercise’.”

To achieve this goal, Smits will be looking at how macrophages sense and respond to mechanical loads. “Without an in-depth understanding of macrophage mechanobiology and its effect on bioimplants, it’s almost impossible to design proper biomaterials for successful and effective implants.”

This ambitious project will aim to combine new and innovative research from different fields such as biomaterial science, immunology, and tissue engineering. “MACxercise will help to decipher how macrophages operate in their microenvironment and how their actions affect implant and their materials,” adds Smits.

Antoni Forner-Cuenca (Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry)

With his ERC Starting grant, Antoni Forner-Cuenca, who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, aims to make an impactful contribution to the field of electrochemical science by investigating new low-cost energy storage technologies.  

“Motivated by issues with renewable energy technologies, there has been lots of recent progress in electrochemical energy storage for large scale applications,” says Forner-Cuenca. “For instance, redox flow batteries have emerged as promising systems, but these technologies have high costs.”

“In this project, I will investigate a new concept that relies solely on low-cost and abundant materials to design an affordable energy storage system based on iron and air, a so-called Fe-air redox flow battery (FAIR-RFB),” Forner-Cuenca explains. To achieve this, he plans to address several challenges with regards to designing electrodes for FAIR-RFBs.

Challenges ahead

First, Forner-Cuenca will explore new ways of designing electrode microstructures. “The plan is to combine computational methods such as evolutionary algorithms with experiments to predict the optimum shape, size, and porosity.”

Next, he will study how the electrode surface affects the transport of charge and chemicals. The team will then place selected molecules on the electrodes and perform nanoelectrochemical imaging to assess how these changes affect electrode performance.

Finally, Forner-Cuenca and his team will develop an electrochemical reactor for high-power FAIR-RFBs. “This stage of the project will build on the previous stages, and the aim is to make advanced iron and air electrodes that yield a high voltage and low resistance electrochemical cell.”

Forner-Cuenca, who also received additional funding of 400,000 euros to purchase a sophisticated scanning electrochemical microscope, is confident that this project will lead to significant breakthroughs in the field of electrochemical energy storage systems. “The new fundamental learnings and novel concepts developed for FAIR-RFBs will help improve the performance and durability of low-cost energy storage technologies, which could have significant implications for integrating renewable sources (wind, solar) and help decarbonize the electricity grid.”

About the current ERC Starting Grant results

397 early-career researchers won European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants. Following the first call for proposals under the EU’s new R&I programme, Horizon Europe, €619 million will be invested in excellent projects dreamed up by scientists and scholars. Grants worth on average €1.5 million will help ambitious young researchers launch their own projects, form their teams and pursue their best ideas.

The selected proposals cover all disciplines of research, from the medical applications of artificial intelligence to the science of controlling matter by using light, and to designing a legal regime for fair influencer marketing. Female researchers won some 43% of grants, an increase from 37% in 2020 and the highest share to date. The ERC Starting Grants have yearly calls and the funding is intended for researchers of any nationality with 2-7 years of experience after the completion of their PhD.

About the ERC 

The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organization for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialization.

The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Since 1 November 2021, Maria Leptin is the President of the ERC. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel.