The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the awardees of the latest call for Proof of Concept Grants, a funding scheme for researchers who have already received a previous ERC Grant and now want to explore the innovation potential of their work. Among the awardees in this call are three researchers from the BIST Community: Dr. Francisco Pelayo García de Arquer (ICFO), Dr. Pere Roca-Cusachs (IBEC), and ICREA Prof. Ben Lehner (CRG).

Three researchers in the BIST Community have received ERC Proof of Concept Grants: Dr. Francisco Pelayo García de Arquer (ICFO), Dr. Pere Roca-Cusachs (IBEC), and ICREA Prof. Ben Lehner (CRG).
The European Research Council (ERC), through its Horizon Europe programme, has awarded ERC Consolidator Grants to Dr. Francisco Pelayo García de Arquer, head of the CO2 Mitigation Accelerated by Photons lab at ICFO, Dr. Pere Roca-Cusachs, who leads the Cellular and Molecular Mechanobiology group at IBEC, and Dr. Ben Lehner, leader of the Genetic Systems lab at CRG. The researchers will each receive €150,000 grants to help bridge the gap between their existing research results and the early phases of commercialisation. Their projects focus, respectively, on demonstrating a scalable process to produce green hydrogen, a new approach to cancer therapy, and a scalable AI-powered peptide drug discovery platform.
ARIEL: Scaling sustainable Anodes for efficIent water ElectroLysis
The main goal of the ARIEL project, led by Prof. García de Arquer at ICFO, is to demonstrate and validate a scalable process for the synthesis, activation, and implementation of catalysts alternative to iridium for water electrolysis – a critical bottleneck on the path to achieve the global deployment of this technology that is needed to meet carbon emission targets.
The CO2 Mitigation Accelerated by Photons group at ICFO, an active contributor to the institute’s Clean Planet programme, has previously demonstrated, at the lab-scale, the feasibility and potential of cobalt-based anodes as alternative to iridium in proton-exchange membrane water electrolysers (PEMWE), achieving activity and stability at PEMWE-relevant current densities (Science 384, 1373, 2024). ARIEL aims to build on these results translating the original, non-scalable synthesis and manufacturing protocols, into scalable processes that retain catalytic activity and stability.
“Cobalt, being more abundant than iridium, is still a very troubling material considering from where it is obtained. That is why we are working on alternatives based on manganese, nickel and many other materials. We will go through the whole the periodic table, if necessary,” explains Prof. García de Arquer of his group’s motivation to advance this technology.
The aim is to demonstrate a process compatible with kg-synthesis and activation, prototyping electrodes up to 400 cm2; and externally validating these, as a prelude to the potential commercial exploitation of this invention. ARIEL will further assess the sensitivity of the different parts of the process on reliability, and perform scale-informed technoeconomic and lifecycle analysis to evaluate various exploitation schemes.
INTROPY: INhibiting mechanoTRansduction as a novel approach for Oncology theraPY
Group leader Dr. Roca-Cusachs and postdoctoral researcher Mamatha Nijaguna at IBEC lead the project INTROPY, focused on inhibiting mechanotransduction as a new strategy for cancer therapy. Mechanotransduction is the process by which cells translate mechanical changes into biological responses, regulating processes such as embryonic development, tumour progression and wound healing.
A common mechanistic alteration is the stiffening of tissues that occurs in cancer for example and facilitates faster tumour growth. In this context, Roca-Cusachs’ team has identified a key interaction between two proteins essential for mechanotransduction and is proposing a therapeutic approach to inhibit this process by blocking these target proteins.
Through various screening tests, the researchers have identified six molecules with great potential to act on these proteins. The INTROPY project will validate these results and provide proof of concept of their potential for cancer treatment, both in vitro and in mouse models.
This innovative approach has the potential to transform cancer therapy and provide new insights into the role of mechanistic signals in disease progression.
If the project is successful, the researchers hope to establish a spin-off company to take the development of these drugs to the clinical stage. This could lead to the first mechanoinhibitor drug of its kind, with potential applications in the treatment of cancer (with a focus on breast and pancreatic cancer) and other diseases characterised by mechanical stress, such as fibrosis.
deepHelix: A massively scalable, AI-powered peptide drug discovery platform
ICREA Prof. Ben Lehner at CRG will lead the project deepHelix, aiming to develop a scalable peptide drug discovery platform that is powered by artificial intelligence.
This project is based on his previous research funded by an ERC Advanced Grant, where Prof. Lehner’s group developed a new method to obtain data on the 3D structure of proteins by measuring the activity of various genetic mutations of molecules. Based on this research, deepHelix will leverage AI to design and optimise peptide drugs with enhanced precision, advancing therapeutic possibilities for complex diseases.