Award Data

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will identify commercially-important genes in Pinctada margaritifera as targets for future manipulation in order to improve the efficiency and profitability of black pearl farming. This work will also attempt to produce transgenic pearl oysters that carry the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) transgene under a constitutive eukaryotic pro ...

Pearl culture is the most lucrative aquaculture industry in the Pacific Islands, and is an ideal development activity for remote, otherwise-impoverished atolls. Commercial farmers in the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands must be hatchery-based, offering opportunity for value-added improvements from triploidy for little additional cost. Techniques for inducing triploidy in Pinctada margaritifera will ...

There are an estimated 76 million cases of foodborne illness in the United States annually, resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. The financial impact has been estimated at $35 billion. Bacterial pathogens account for 14 million of the total cases. To assure food safety, monitoring of these pathogens is a critical component. Cultivation is the gold standard; however, it is labori ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant): Malaria is a tropical parasitic disease that poses a significant health threat to much of the world. Each year, approximately 500 million people become infected and more than 2 million die. There is a great need to control the spread of this disease. One of the main focuses of malaria vaccine development has been the on use o ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant): Malaria is a tropical parasitic disease that poses a significant health threat to much of the world. Each year, approximately 500 million people become infected and more than 2 million die. There is a great need to control the spread of this disease. One of the main focuses of malaria vaccine development has been the on use o ...

DESCRIPTION (Adapted from the application): The goal of this project is to produce a water-soluble anticancer prodrug and an antibody-enzyme conjugate for use in Antibody-Directed Enzyme Prodrug Therapy (ADEPT). The prodrug will be a derivative of 9-aminocamptothecin (9AC), a lipophilic topoisomerase I inhibitor that is not subject to P-glycoprotein resistance. Though it ...

DESCRIPTION (applicant's abstract): The detection of pesticide residue in foods is a significant issue in food safety. Current analytical methods, however, involve complicated and expensive equipment that requires skilled operators and cannot be readily applied to field applications. Antibody based methods are possible alternatives to current pesticide detection methods ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): An estimated 150 million people world-wide are infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), a major cause of chronic liver disease. The nonstructural protein 3 (NS3) of HCV is a multi-functional enzyme in the replication cycle of the virus and requires NS4A as cofactor for proteolytic activity. Inhibition of the NS3/4A protease acti ...

DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from Applicant's Abstract) Malaria is a tropical parasitic disease that is a significant health threat. Each year, approximately 500 million people become infected and 2 to 3 million die worldwide. There is a great need to control the spread of this disease. Recently, the development of malaria vaccines has focused on the use of recombinant DNA t ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant): There are 100 million cases of dengue infection each year with 250,000 cases of the life-threatening Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever/Dengue Shock Syndrome (DHS/DSS). Treatment options are limited to symptoms management. Passive immunoprophylaxis and immunotherapy are standard treatments for a number of viral diseases. However, ...