Newsletter #22
March 6th, 2025

Dear all,

Last day to apply to the Congrès France Bioproduction with BioConvS to get a free entrance! Be sure to check that out, as well as our open calls (PhD and equipment grants).

In other news, our AMI and postdoc calls just closed and we are excited to see which projects will be selected among the ones received!

Attend the Congrès France Bioproduction for free with BioConvS
The Congrès France Bioproduction is the must-attend event for the French bioproduction sector. As last year, BioConvS is delighted to offer free tickets! BioConvS will sponsor up to 10 entrances to the conference. This is the last day to apply!

Inventors challenge

Défi Inventeur et Inventrice
PhD student? Researcher? Engineer? What if you turned your ideas into concrete invention projects? Are you lacking inspiration, unsure of the invention process, or not familiar with the best practices to protect your creations?
Join the Inventors Challenge and profit from BioConvS' assistance and support! 

Please note the launch of the first day of the Inventor challenge on March 20, a whole day in person in Paris (Learning Planet Institute) in workshop format. We will have the pleasure of following a morning on good practices in intellectual property provided by two IP Lawyers-Business Managers from the INPI (Marie Fichet and Victor Barré). The afternoon will continue with a practical workshop that is ideal for boosting your inventiveness. This workshop full of originality will be provided by Professor Todd Lubart.

BioConvS calls

Our 2025 PhD call is open until April 30th
We are offering 4 PhD fellowships for collaborative projects. Interdisciplinary collaborations between biotherapy/bioproduction and synthetic biology are strongly encouraged.

Opportunities

New call of the PEPR Biotherapies
A new call for projects in two phases, with a global envelope of 13.5 million euros, was launched on March 3, 2025 to encourage multidisciplinary research initiatives aimed at transforming the field of biotherapies. The objective? Design new therapeutic solutions, optimize bioproduction processes and strengthen their social acceptability.

Join the D4GEN Hackathon 2025
Genopole invites researchers, engineers, and innovators to tackle data challenges in genomics and synthetic biology. Collaborate, develop AI-driven solutions, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs. Engage with experts, gain visibility, and push the boundaries of data-driven research.

i-Lab Innovation Competition 

The 27th edition of the i-Lab Innovation Competition, which is part of the France 2030 plan and is operated by Bpifrance, aims to detect projects for the creation of innovative technology companies and to support the best of them through financial aid and tailored support.

Trainings

Get free access to the ISCT Advanced Cell Therapy Manufacturing and Regulatory Course

A few individual yearly licenses are still available for of our Basic Lab Membership You can apply to access the ISCT network and training material, which notably includes the Advanced Cell Therapy Manufacturing and Regulatory Course, and much more!

MOOC "Innover avec la Recherche Publique"

The MOOC "Innovating with public research" produced by SATT Ouest Valorisation and the C.U.R.I.E Network is an online certification training course that covers all aspects of the valorization of research work. It is aimed at researchers and doctoral students as part of their awareness of the valorization of their research results.
The next session will take place from April 7th to May 18th. Registration is open!

Synthetic biologists are funny people. I’m not sure why. Maybe it is because there’s some kind of functional overlap between the part of the brain that cracks jokes and the part that scientists use for creative problem-solving. Maybe it is because laughter fosters the psychological resilience we need to roll with the ups and downs of working in hard tech. Or maybe it is because you have to be a little bit crazy to do what we do─to look at a blob of cells growing in a Petri dish and say, “Yep, I am going to engineer that.”

 📰Read the full article from Jake Wintermute (Ginkgo Bioworks) on ACS Synthetic Biology

Horizon Europe webinars
The European Commission is organising a series of webinars on the preparation and management of projects in the context of Horizon Europe. The events will be live on youtube at the following links and times.

Horizon Implementation Day: Finding opportunities and submitting a proposal in Horizon Europe
Date: 13 March 2025, 09:30h to 12:30h (CET, Brussels Time)
Event Website: Horizon Implementation Day: Finding opportunities and submitting a proposal in Horizon Europe (13 March 2025) (remote only, no need to register)  

Horizon Implementation Day: Grant Agreement Preparation in Horizon Europe 

Date: 20 March 2025, 09:30h to 12:45h (CET, Brussels Time)
Event Website: Horizon Implementation Day: Grant Agreement Preparation in Horizon Europe (20 March 2025) (remote only, no need to register)  

Lump Sum Funding in Horizon Europe: How does it work? How to write a proposal?
Date: 27 March 2025, from 10:00h to 12:00h (CET, Brussels time)
Target group: Applicants and beneficiaries who are or will be involved in lump sum grants
Event website: Lump Sum Funding in Horizon Europe: How does it work? How to write a proposal? (27 March 2025) (remote only, no need to register)  

Horizon Implementation Day: Grant Management in Horizon Europe
Date: 03 April 2025, 09:30h to 13:00h (CEST, Brussels Time)
Event Website: Horizon Implementation Day: Grant Management in Horizon Europe (03 April 2025) (remote only, no need to register)

MSCA COFUND 2025
The european call MSCA COFUND 2025 is open until June 24th. The PCN MSCA is organising a series of info events:

A national info session on Feb 7th, 10h to 12h: Register to the webinar

A series of thematic workshops for the project coordinators on March 17, 18, 20, 21 (save the date)

A writing workshop webinar on May 16 (save the date)

A postdoctoral position is available at Institut Mondor de Recherche Biomédicale (IMRB) - Université Paris Est Créteil (UPEC) in the lab of Frédéric Relaix to work within a multidisciplinary team to model congenital myopathies using human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC). Learn more

A Quality Control Technician position is available at Centre MEARY for gene and cell therapy. Learn more

⭐Looking for a postdoc or PhD candidate to work on endometriosis
The team of Dr. Nicolas Chevalier at Laboratoire Matière Systèmes Complexes, located in the heart of Paris, is looking for excellent, hard-working, motivated PhD or postdoc candidates to join the fight against endometriosis. Applications from various backgrounds will be considered : physicist, biophysicist, biomedical engineer, biologist, physiologist, clinician.

Learn more

Is looking for a position as R&D engineer:
After graduating from ESPCI Paris-PSL with a degree in physics and chemistry of materials, I recently defended my thesis on biomaterials for the generation of 3D cell complexes. This has enabled me to develop advanced skills in polymer science (synthesis and characterization) and cell culture (2D and 3D). I am currently looking for a position as a research and development engineer in biotechnologies, more specifically in the generation of multicellular systems or organisms, in the Paris region. Download CV

Census of BioConvS labs
Starting January 2024, all labs affiliated or wanting to participate in a DIM BioConvS activity will have to be registered. Why? Most importantly because we want to build a cartography of biotherapy, bioproduction and synthetic biology in Ile-de-France and you want to make sure that you're on it!

Recent publications

Do you want to see your paper featured in our next newlsetter? Write to chiara.fracassi@u-paris.fr

Grandi, F.C., Pezet, S., Arnould, A., Mazzucchi, S., Gidaja, E., Astord, S., Chapart, M., Vasseur, S., Ricupero, A., Ernu, M., Sampaio, Y., Cohen-Tannoudji, M., Meunier, P., Benkhelifa-Ziyyat, S., Miladi, L., Vialle, R., Smeriglio, P., 2025. Systemic Factors Affect Bone Health in SMA Type II Patients and a Mouse Model of SMA. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.02.05.636673

Nevot, G., Santos-Moreno, J., Campamà-Sanz, N., Toloza, L., Parra-Cid, C., Jansen, P.A.M., Barbier, I., Ledesma-Amaro, R., van den Bogaard, E.H., Güell, M., 2025. Synthetically programmed antioxidant delivery by a domesticated skin commensal. Cell Systems 101169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2025.101169

Tian, X.-J., Zhang, R., Ferro, M.V., Goetz, H., 2025. Modeling ncRNA-Mediated Circuits in Cell Fate Decision: From Systems Biology to Synthetic Biology, in: Lai, X., Gupta, S., Vera Gonzalez, J. (Eds.), Computational Biology of Non-Coding RNA: Methods and Protocols. Springer US, New York, NY, pp. 139–154. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-4290-0_6

Zhang, Qiang, Chen, W., Qin, M., Wang, Y., Pu, Z., Ding, K., Liu, Y., Zhang, Qunfeng, Li, D., Li, X., Zhao, Y., Yao, J., Huang, L., Wu, J., Yang, L., Chen, H., Yu, H., 2025. Integrating protein language models and automatic biofoundry for enhanced protein evolution. Nat Commun 16, 1553. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56751-8

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