Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): As cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the United States with some sub-types remaining essentially untreatable, expansion of available drug targets will provide significant new options for the development ofmore effective antineoplastic agents. The major goal of this project is to apply a unique drug discovery strategy to cancer drug development. Th ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a significant human health issue, accounting for 50% of liver transplants in the US, with approximately 170 million persons infected worldwide. The current standard of care therapy of PEGylated-interferon and ribavirin is effective in only about 50% of patients, with severe side effects and contraindications limiting patient ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Clostridium difficile (CD) is a bacterium causing diarrhea and other intestinal problems linked to 14,000 annual deaths in the US. CDI is an antibiotic-associated infection as well as a health-care-associated infection.Current CDI diagnosis relies on CD toxins enzyme immunoassay (EIA) together with antigen (GDH) EIA. Although stool toxin EIA is specific and rel ...

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): NMR is probably the most powerful and widely used analytical technique for structure determination and function elucidation of molecules of all types, but it suffers from low sensitivity, particularly for insoluble biological macromolecules. Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) with Magic Angle Spinning (MAS) has recently demonstrated S/N gains exceeding t ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term objective of this STTR project is to commercialize the protein multi-blot Western device, which contributes to improving the productivity and accuracy of conventional Western blot analysis. Although Western blotting has been used for more than three decades, this labor-and-cost demanding technique remains a key routine for a majority of life scien ...

DESCRIPTION: While HIV/AIDS can be managed with antiretroviral drugs that block viral replication, these agents do not clear the virus and require life-long drug administration with associated risks of cumulative toxicity and drug resistance. Recently, wediscovered a completely new class of compounds that interfere with the HIV-1 virulence factor, Nef. This viral protein is critical to HIV-1 repli ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): People with traumatic brain injury (TBI) are often plagued with socio-emotional deficits that include difficulty identifying emotions in oneself (alexithymia), difficulty recognizing other peoples' emotions (impaired affect recognition), and empathy loss. These highly prevalent deficits, ranging between 39-70% of the moderate to severe TBI population, are ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of the proposed project is to alleviate the enormous public health burden of heart failure. Heart failure leads to significant morbidity and mortality, affects almost five million Americans, and results in morethan 35 billion dollars in annual healthcare costs. Current pharmacological and surgical treatments are only moderately effective and can have s ...

We have discovered the first-ever inhibitors of PF4, a platelet protein central to the pathophysiology of heparin induced thrombocytopenia (HIT). Heparin is a naturally-occurring anticoagulant that prevents the formation of clots and extension of existingclots within the vasculature, and major medical applications of heparin include dialysis, cardiac catheterization, and cardiopulmonary bypass sur ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The broad and long-term objective of this research project is to use, develop and market an instrument for the simultaneous recording of sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) and electrocardiogram (ECG) using electrodes on the skin. This method (neuECG) was discovered in Dr. Chen's research laboratory at the Krannert Institute of Cardiology, and a patent applic ...