Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In the last decade, Acinetobacter baumannii has emerged as one of the most highly antibiotic-resistant pathogens in the United States (US) and throughout the world. These infections are increasingly prevalent and highlylethal, killing 50-60% of those infected. Worse, strains of A. baumannii that no known antibiotic will kill have now emerged, and will continue ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Up to 170 million people worldwide are chronically infected with HCV Hepatitis C virus (HCV) putting the infected individuals at significant risk for cirrhosis, liver failure and liver cancer. End- stage liver diseasecaused by HCV is the leading indication of liver transplantation (LT) in the United States. However, reinfection with HCV occurs universally and ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Invasive candidiasis (IC) is one of the most serious threats to patients in a critical setting. With as many as 60,000 cases per year in the U.S., the total cost associated with IC in the U.S. may be as high as 2-4 billion/year. One of the most critical factors influencing patient outcome is early diagnosis. The goal of this project is a rapi and inexpensive i ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite advances in the development of HIV drugs there remains a need for new therapies. Toxicities associated with long term use of many of the approved HIV drugs coupled with the development of resistance drives the need for new and novel antivirals. Maturation inhibitors (MIs) represent one such class of HIV therapies. HIV maturation inhibitors block virus r ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Methamphetamine use among gay and bisexually identified men (GBM) and other men who have sex with men (MSM) is strongly associated with HIV infection due to the concomitant high-risk sexual behaviors that often occur while using the drug. As a result, HIV prevalence is significantly higher among MSM that report frequent use of methamphetamine and highest among ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Effective early intervention depends on reliable screening of risk for communication impairments as soon as possible. Established infant communication risk factors include poor attention, gestures, social connectedness,exploratory play, and speech. Although these risk factors can be detected by 12-18 mos. and reliably predict later language and social disorders ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term goal of this project is to identify and validate biomarkers of mitochondrial dysfunction due to environmental stressors. Diverse acute insults from surgery, trauma, ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) and drug andenvironmental chemical toxicity lead to mitochondrial dysfunction and result in cell injury and death in many organs/tissues (e.g. heart, lung, b ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Project Summary We propose to develop a non-invasive method to predict mammalian oocyte quality by analyzing the surrounding cumulus cells' gene expression patterns (cGEP). The result of the cGEP assay---a cGEP score---can be used to predict embryo quality and ultimately the embryo transfer (ET) results. This technology, if success, will for the first time ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Heart attacks (i.e. myocardial infarction or MI) occur in more than 1.2 million patients annually. Advances in pharmacological therapy have dramatically improved survival following the initial MI. Consequently, the number of patients with previous MI continues to increase, and as a result, put in jeopardy millions of patients for development of heart failure. I ...

Project Summary Human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is recognized as the single most important viral cause of acute respiratory disease in infants and young children worldwide. Elderly populations and immunocompromised individuals are also at significant risk for serious RSV disease. Despite this very substantial disease burden imposed by RSV worldwide, there are no vaccines available. Severa ...