Award Data

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT In response to National Institute on Aging's (NIA) strategic plan and PAS-19-317, we propose novel therapeuticsto treat Alzheimer disease and related dementias (ADRDs). We have developed novel combinations of three natural product compounds, which modulate complementary pathways in multiple types of CNS cells (i.e., neurons, microglia) associated with AD pathology. These c ...

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 ...

Knee  Osteoarthritis  (KOA)  is  a  degenerative  joint  disease  that  leads  to  significant  pain  and  functional  disability  affecting  over  30%  of  older  adults  making  it  one  of  the  most  common  and  debilitating  conditions  related  to  aging.  This  disease  results  in  a  loss  of  mobility,  reduced  quality  of  life,  and  in ...

Lupus nephritis (LN), an immune complex-mediated glomerulonephritis, affects up to two-thirds of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. Despite standard treatment protocols, progression of the most aggressive forms of LN (class III and IV) to end-stage renal failure remains high. Thus, there is a need for biomarkers of therapeutic response that would allow physicians to make better-informed t ...

Project Summary: Alcoholic Cardiomyopathy (ACM) is the most prevalent form of ethanol-induced heart damage. Alcohol dose-dependently induces ACM, characterized by progressive reduction in myocardial contractility and ventricular dilatation, culminating in heart failure. At the cellular level, chronic alcohol consumption results in cardiomyocyte death, cardiac inflammation, and cardiac fibrosis. Th ...

ABSTRACT Suicide is a leading cause of death in the US and suicide rates have steadily increased. Despite this, there is a paucity of interventions that reduce suicide ideation and behavior. In this project, we seek to enhance a beta version of our suicide prevention digital therapeutic (developed in phase I) and conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of the digital therape ...

Project Summary Each year, between 340,000 and 900,000 premature deaths can be linked to air pollution caused by releasing Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), i.e., an estimated 1.8 billion tons of VOCs are emitted to the global environment each year. Also, some VOCs cause serious adverse health effects even at the trace level concentration, e.g., cancer, damage to the central nervous and immune sy ...

Abstract Our long-term objective is to fill the unmet need for treatments for heart failure (HF). Caveolin-1 is a promising therapeutic target in fibrotic diseases. The profibrotic effects of caveolin-1 deficiency in cells and in mouse models is suppressed by a peptide equivalent to its active site (caveolin-1 scaffolding domain, CSD). We have shown the beneficial effects of CSD in two independent ...

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive interstitial lung disease with a median survival of only 3 - 5 years from diagnosis. Although two FDA-approved drugs, pirfenidone and nintedanib, may slow the rate of decline of lung function in some IPF patients, neither drug significantly alters the course of this lethal disease. There is a great need for new drugs with greater efficacy and le ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive breast cancer subtype. It accounts for ~15% of all breast cancer yet is responsible for 30% of breast cancer deaths. TNBC is treated primarily by conventional chemotherapy; however, resistance to therapy is common, leading to high mortality rates. Importantly, the benefit of current therapeutic strategies used in chemoresi ...