Carmelo D'Agostino, a researcher in traffic safety and behaviour, and stem cell researcher Paul Bourgine receive ERC Proof of Concept grants for their research into developing a new method for traffic safety assessments and finding new accurate models for testing immunotherapies in cancer treatment.
The European Research Council's Proof of Concept is awarded to researchers to investigate the commercial potential of their research. All of them have previously received ERC Starting Grants. The funding is part of the EU's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.
Carmelo D'Agostino, a researcher and team leader in traffic safety and behaviour at LTH, is receiving the grant for his SafeMoVE project.
Congratulations! Can you tell us a bit about your project?
"Thank you! The project is called SafeMoVE, and it builds on the scientific advances of my ERC Starting Grant, SUperSAFE. We are developing a universal, proactive methodology for traffic safety assessment-especially for complex, mixed traffic scenarios involving automated vehicles, vulnerable road users, and conventional drivers. Rather than relying on past crash data, we use cutting-edge tools like drone footage, simulations, and machine learning to detect near-miss events and dangerous interactions before accidents happen. This approach can help identify and fix safety issues early, making our roads safer and more adaptive to future mobility systems."
What do you hope to achieve with your research?
"We want to change how road safety is assessed-shifting from reactive methods based on crash history to proactive evaluations that prevent accidents before they occur. Our ambition is to provide policymakers, engineers, and car manufacturers with scalable tools for evaluating the safety of new vehicle technologies and infrastructure designs, even before deployment. Ultimately, we hope this will support the EU's Vision Zero goal of eliminating road fatalities by 2050."
What does the ERC Grant mean to you?
"The ERC PoC Grant is incredibly meaningful. It allows us to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world application. With this support, we can move from scientific theory to market-ready solutions that could have a tangible impact on road safety policies, automotive development, and urban planning. It's also an opportunity to build strong partnerships with industry and public sector stakeholders."
What is the practical use of the results?
"Our methodology can be used to evaluate the safety of roads, intersections, or vehicle systems-without waiting for crashes to happen. This is especially critical for connected and automated vehicles, which challenge traditional safety evaluation methods. Practical applications include safety audits for cities, virtual testing for vehicle manufacturers, and policy assessments for transport authorities."
Why are these results so interesting?
"Because they offer a completely new lens on road safety. By analysing interactions and near-misses using surrogate safety measures and Extreme Value Theory, we can uncover hidden risks and make interventions where they are most needed. This proactive perspective is especially timely as cities and industries adapt to automation and increasing traffic complexity."
What is the most important finding of the study so far?
"One of our key insights is that many high-risk traffic interactions occur in places or situations not captured by traditional accident statistics. Our system can detect these "invisible dangers" using detailed trajectory data and advanced risk modeling-enabling more effective and timely safety improvements."
Paul Bourgine, research group leader at Lund University's Stem Cell Centre, has been awarded an ERC Proof of Concept grant for his project CiThOss - Cellular immunoTHERapy modelling by exploitation of humanized OSSicles.
Paul Bourgine, principal investigator at Lund University's Stem Cell Center, has been awarded a prestigious ERC Proof of Concept grant for his innovative research project CiThOss - Cellular immunoTHERapy modelling by exploitation of humanized OSSicles. The project aims to bridge the gap between research and innovation in cancer therapy development by improving the way immunotherapies are tested before reaching patients.
"CiThOss is a project at the frontier between research and innovation. From a research standpoint, we aim to demonstrate that humanized ossicles (hOss) can serve as a superior platform for modelling immunotherapies," explains Bourgine. These so-called hOss are mini-bone tissues designed to replicate a patient's bone and bone marrow environment-including the cancer itself. "By recreating the patient tissue and disease environment, we offer a personalized approach for testing immunotherapies, an emerging class of treatment that harnesses the immune system. We postulate that resulting data will be more predictive of treatment efficacy."
What makes CiThOss unique is not only its scientific ambition but also its application of proprietary technology developed at Bourgine's lab.
"This is where the innovation aspect comes into play; the creation of patient mini-bones is enabled by the OssiGel technology, proprietary of Dhalion Biotech AB, a spin-off from my laboratory. Demonstrating the value of patient mini-bones/OssiGel in the context of immunotherapies will boost the development of our start-up, a second objective of this ERC PoC."
The inspiration for the project came from the persistent discrepancy between results in animal testing and those in clinical trials.
"In pre-clinical models, many treatments are highly effective in treating cancers but often fail in human trials. What are the cellular and molecular differences between mouse and human, explaining that gap? It seems that our bone marrow is quite unique, exercising multiple roles: protecting cancer cells but also dampening the immune responses. I thus naturally wonder whether our bone marrow environment could also affect cellular immunotherapies, possibly contributing to their current limitations."
The project responds to a widely acknowledged problem in cancer research: the low predictive value of current preclinical testing models. Bourgine emphasizes that this is not a marginal issue.
"We are here talking about 90% failure rate overall, creating a huge financial and translational challenge!"
Immunotherapies, including CAR-T cells and checkpoint inhibitors, have shown promise, but their effectiveness can vary significantly between different types of cancer and individual patients.
"CiThOss thus aims at demonstrating the predictive power of personalized tools for cellular immunotherapies. In this PoC project, we will focus on generating hOss from leukemia patients and evaluate a CAR-T cell product efficacy in our model versus the gold standard. Compiled results will hopefully validate the superiority of hOss and strengthen its adoption for the safety and efficacy evaluation of immunotherapies."
Receiving the ERC Proof of Concept grant is a major milestone for Bourgine and his team.
"Very few grant schemes combine research and innovation objectives, this is the specificity of ERC PoC. ERC grants are prestigious, delivering a stamp of quality that foster visibility and credibility. It increases the likelihood of translating our findings. My lab and Dhalion Biotech AB aim to fully capitalize on this opportunity."
Looking ahead, Bourgine is enthusiastic about the potential of CiThOss.
"This is a truly exciting step for us; we propose combining personalized tissue engineering and cancer immunotherapies. It's a completely new direction, with great translational opportunity but also new fundamental discoveries to be made. Can't wait to see the outcomes!"
