Award Data

PROJECT SUMMARY Actively involving informal caregivers in direct patient care at the bedside in the intensive care unit (ICU) has the potential to improve patient, informal caregiver, and health care system outcomes. Practice guidelines call for the liberal inclusion of informal caregivers as active partners in ICU care, but there is a critical, unmet need to develop tools that effectively operati ...

Project Summary/Abstract Bone marrow aspirates are critical to the diagnosis, staging, and monitoring of hematologic conditions and cancers (e.g., leukemia, aplastic anemia, sickle cell disease, and metastasis of solid tumors), but 8-50% of aspirations are unsuccessful due to operator technique, hemodilution, or underlying pathology. Because this process is manual and error-prone, there is an oppo ...

Project Summary The goal of this Fast Track STTR project is to determine proof-of-principle and efficacy of a novel blood brain barrier (BBB) penetrating therapeutic nanoparticle for the potential treatment of otherwise intractable brain tumors like glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). This project seeks to demonstrate that novel, targetable nanoparticles can delivery therapeutic substances to human bra ...

Project Summary In diagnosis, risk stratification, and management of life-threatening diseases/conditions, every minute counts and unambiguous detection of many relevant protein biomarkers is crucial. Unfortunately, the workflow of current unambiguous approach–mass spectrometry–is bottlenecked by the sample preparation process. A microwave-enhanced, flow-through microreactor is proposed here f ...

Project Summary / Abstract: Chronic auto-inflammatory skin diseases such as cutaneous lupus erythematosus (CLE) affect millions of Americans with limited therapeutic options currently available, creating a significant need for novel therapeutic options. A hallmark of CLE is the presence of autoantibodies against nucleic acids and nucleic acid-binding proteins, as well as elevated interferons (IFNs ...

In 2020 alone, pancreatic cancer is estimated to have resulted in 47,050 deaths in the U.S. making it the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) makes up greater than 90% of all pancreatic cancer diagnoses and has an overall five-year survival rate of just 10%. New therapeutic options are needed to improve the poor prognosis for patients with PDAC. Ex ...

Summary/Abstract The goal of this project is to develop a precision medicine approach to the rapid diagnosis of membranous nephropathy (MN) using automated statistical analysis of proteomic data obtained from kidney biopsies. This approach uses data-independent acquisition mass spectrometry (DIA-MS) and an algorithmic data pipeline capable of efficiently determining the most likely MN antigen type ...

Most patients with melanoma die from metastatic disease as the result of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) spreading from a primary tumor through the blood to vital organs. Despite significant progress in the development of in vitro CTC-detection assays, they still have low sensitivity due to the small samples of blood taken. To overcome these problems, we developed in vivo photoacoustic (PA) flow cy ...

ABSTRACT Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide and comes with a significant economic burden associated with emergency room visits and hospitalizations. Oxidative stress- mediated secondary injury post-TBI is a considerable risk factor for mortality and long-term impairment. Immediately following TBI, a cascade of biological responses leads to i ...

ABSTRACT This STTR Phase I project uses mixed-method formative evaluation strategies to develop, test, and evaluate an alpha prototype of Breezmed, a point-of-care electronic prior authorization web-based platform. Prior authorization burdens the current medical system, hampering a provider’s ability to efficiently prescribe medication and in a timely fashion. This often leads to treatment non-c ...