Leo Hanke receives ERC starting grant
The European Research Council (ERC) has announced this year’s recipients of Starting Grants for young scientists and scholars across Europe. Six project applications submitted by researchers from Karolinska Institutet have secured grants totalling 9.8 million Euro – an important recognition for KI. One of the grantees is CMM researcher Leo Hanke.
The European Research Council (ERC) announced on 5th September 2024 that it would allocate EUR 780 million in Starting Grants.
A total of 3,474 applications were evaluated by peer review panels composed of internationally recognised researchers. Of these, 14.2 per cent were selected for funding.
Leo Hanke, CMM Team Leader and assistant professor at the Department of Medicine, Solna, is one of the six principal investigators at Karolinska Institutet who received this highly competitive grant.
The granted project is titled “VaxVision: Structure and Function-based Design of Vaccine Antigens and Antiviral Immunotherapies” and described as follows:
“This project aims to improve vaccines by leveraging the unused potential of viral glycoprotein presentation. Vaccines are critical in preventing viral diseases, and recent advances in how vaccines are made and delivered have made them more effective and widely available.
Viral glycoproteins, which help viruses enter host cells, are the main targets of the immune system and therefore the key component of viral vaccines. However, for many viruses there is a lack of fundamental biological insights in how to easily turn these glycoproteins into highly effective vaccine components.
The project will provide an innovative workflow for systematically uncovering important details that can lead to improvements in vaccines, not just against viruses but potentially other pathogens as well.
Libraries of small specific inhibitors will be used, including camelid nanobodies and computationally de novo designed proteins to study the structure and function of highly pathogenic viruses. The goal is to use these insights to create better vaccine components.”
About ERC Starting Grants
ERC Starting Grants provide support for promising young researchers at the beginning of their independent research career. The programme is open to researchers of any nationality with 2-7 years of experience since completion of their PhD, a scientific track record showing great promise and an excellent research proposal.
This text is based on an article from Karolinska Institutet.