Award Data

There is unmet need for rapid, cost effective in vitro methods to identify chemicals that pose a hazard to the human brain. A number of in vitro assays utilizing primary cells have been tested in an effort to devise effective models to prioritize chemicals for further in depth toxicity studies. However, isolation of primary human neural tissue is cost and labor intensive, and cannot be produced in ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Vaccination significantly reduces morbidity and mortality caused by annual influenza epidemics. Traditionally, influenza vaccines have been manufactured using adapted influenza virus grown in eggs. However, this methodsuffers from inherent disadvantages such as slow production and allergenic egg proteins in the final product. To avoid these drawbacks, new vacci ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cryopyrin-associated periodic syndromes (CAPS) are a family of rare autoinflammatory diseases of which neonatal-onset multisystem inflammatory disease (NOMID) is the most severe phenotype. NOMID is characterized by NLRP3 activating mutations resulting in excessive interleukin- 1?IL-1?and IL-18 production associated with recurrent fever, rash, skeletal lesions, ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most diagnosed cancer among men in developed countries including the United States with significant medical cost burdens. Tremendous advances have been made in PCa screening technologies, which allow early detection and treatment. Common treatment options include radical prostatectomy, external beam radiation therapy (RT) and inters ...

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Dysregulation of apoptosis pathways and loss of Human Beta Defensin hBD are the common tactics adapted by cancer cells to circumvent the effects of chemotherapy Consequently high dose of chemotherapy is required to obtain a clinically relevant therapeutic index which in turn compromises safety and develops resistance to therapy The problem is acute p ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The mission of Novab is to utilize the unique properties of lamprey generated Variable Lymphocyte Receptors (VLRs) to develop effective, complementary and/or superior therapeutics to those currently derived from mammalian monoclonal antibodies (mMAbs). In the current application, we seek to initiate and demonstrate proof of concept for one commercial project w ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Modified ribonucleic acids (RNA) are important regulators of translation and other cellular pathways. Non- coding RNAs like microRNAs play significant roles in neuronal development, and can serve as biomarkers for psychiatric disorders. Another such modified RNA is circular RNA (circRNA), a non-coding transcript present in the cytoplasm. Since circRNAs are pres ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Noise is the most common occupational and environmental hazard, thus it is not surprising that noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is the second most common form of sensorineural hearing deficit, second only to age-related hearing loss (presbycusis). Although therapeutics that target the free radical pathway have shown promise for reducing NIHL, there are no FDA- ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Improving Articulatory Precision in Neurologically Compromised Adults Using Audiovisual Biofeedback. One of the most frustrating impairments of neurological damage is the inability to communicate properly via the speechmodality due to weakness in the oral motor structures, also known as dysarthria. We propose to develop a Tongue Tracking System (TTS) that can p ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Sinoora Inc. proposes to develop an on-chip spectral domain-optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) system for ophthalmic applications. Phase I will concentrate on demonstrating the passive optical components of the OCT system on a single chip. The passive components include a spectrometer, coupler and an interferometer. These on- chip components will then be int ...