Three BIST Community researchers have received Proof of Concept Grants from the European Research Council: Prof. Katherine Villa (ICIQ), ICREA Prof. Manuel Salmeron (IBEC), and Dr. Xavier Rovira (IBEC).
From left to right: Katherine Villa (ICIQ), Manuel Salmeron (IBEC), and Xavier Rovira (IBEC), recipients of the ERC Proof of Concept Grants in the first round of the 2025 competition.
The ERC Proof of Concept Grants support frontier researchers in exploring the commercial or societal potential of their research. Each €150,000 grant helps bridge the gap between ground-breaking science and real-world application. In the first round of the 2025 competition, 150 projects across Europe have been selected for funding, from 480 proposals received, with a 31% success rate. Spain stands out with 20 awarded projects, seven of which are awarded to researchers in Catalonia, placing it alongside the top countries Germany (27) and the UK (17).
In the current call, three researchers from two BIST Community centres received the prestigious ERC Proof of Concept Grant. Prof. Katherine Villa from the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) will develop the project PhotoSERS, which aims to deliver a real-time, portable solution for detecting and capturing “forever chemicals” in water; ICREA Prof. Manuel Salmeron from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) will focus on designing functional bioinks with biological activity for printing artificial tissues with the project FACTORINK; and Dr. Xavier Rovira, also from IBEC, seeks to develop the EVOaware platform, which is designed to address tumour resistance to therapies and accelerate the discovery and development of new cancer treatments.
PhotoSERS: Detecting and capturing forever chemicals in water
Katherine Villa heads the Light-driven systems for energy, health and environmental remediation group at ICIQ, where her research focuses on nanomaterials, environmental remediation, and light-driven micro/nanomotors. PhotoSERS aims to develop light-powered microswimmers capable of selectively capturing and detecting harmful PFAS – also known as “forever chemicals” – from water, offering a sensitive, real-time monitoring solution for these persistent environmental pollutants.
“With PhotoSERS, we aim to move beyond the lab and bring practical solutions for the detection of emerging pollutants,” said Prof. Villa. “This Proof of Concept Grant will help us take a critical step towards making our technology accessible and impactful in real-world environmental monitoring.”
FACTORINK: New bioinks for printing artificial tissues
Manuel Salmeron’s project FACTORINK focuses on manufacturing bioinks with biological functionality for in vitro tissue printing.
Bioinks are hydrogel-based materials containing living cells and other biomaterials, such as proteins. These materials are used in 3D bioprinting; however, for this technique to work properly, the bioinks must be biocompatible and recreate an environment that allows the cells to survive and behave as they would in the human body.
In this context, IBEC researchers have designed a new class of bioinks that incorporate extracellular matrix proteins. These proteins preserve their biological function, allowing the bioinks to act as a reservoir for growth factors.
“We have demonstrated the potential of this technology using simple cell models. This funding is a great opportunity that will allow us to continue developing these bioinks for use in more sophisticated applications, including multicellular models that incorporate the immune system. The results will consolidate the technology and open up commercialisation opportunities,” explains Salmeron, who leads IBEC’s Microenvironments for Medicine group.
EVOaware: Understanding tumour evolution to defeat cancer
Led by Xavier Rovira, who heads the Spatial Biotechnology group at IBEC, the EVOaware project aims to develop an innovative platform that addresses one of the main challenges in cancer treatment: resistance to therapies.
Solid tumours often develop resistance to treatments, rendering them ineffective. This resistance is not random; it arises from the complex interaction between different types of cancer cells and their environment, driving the tumour to adapt and evolve. Current drug discovery strategies fail to adequately address this complexity.
EVOaware’s proposed platform is based on advanced tissue imaging technologies that can anticipate how tumours evolve and how they might become resistant to both known and experimental therapies. This pioneering solution integrates genetic screening and lineage tracing to analyse cellular diversity within tumours, spatial coding in organoids to accurately identify the effects of drugs, and spatial omics techniques to track molecular changes in context. In the future, it will also incorporate multimodal AI models that simulate tumour microenvironments and predict their evolution.
“We are very excited about this project. With the data we obtain, we hope to demonstrate the potential of our platform and strategically position ourselves to bring our technology to market,” explains Rovira.
