Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is a growing body of evidence that implicates the protein kinase Pim-1 as a major driver of prostate cancer progression, and perhaps response to chemotherapy. Pim-1 is overexpressed in early prostate intraepithelial neoplasia and metastatic prostate cancer, and its levels predict response to therapy. Pim-1-overexpressing mouse prostate stem cells demonstr ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): TOPIC - Tooth Phone(R) Auditory Device - TPAD ABSTRACT The Tooth Phone(R) Auditory Device - TPAD is new alternative device to the only direct bone conduction hearing aid currently accepted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of certain specific types of hearing loss. Unlike the precedent FDA approved device that uses an osseointegrated i ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Acid ceramidase (AC) has been implicated as a novel target for cancer therapy because of its pivotal role in regulating interconversion of three key bioactive lipids; ceramide (Cer), sphingosine (Sph) and Sphingosine-1-Phosphate (S1P). It is well known that Cer functions predominantly as a tumor suppressor lipid and mediator of apoptosis following chemo and rad ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Degenerative joint diseases such as osteoarthritis remain the source of significant pain and disability, affecting 20 million adults with an economic burden of over 40 billion per year to the United States. While joint replacement is a well-established procedure, its finite life span makes this treatment unacceptable for younger or more active individuals, of ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The American Cancer Society estimates that a total of 240,430 new breast cancers were diagnosed in 2007 (178,400 new cases of invasive breast cancer, and 62,030 new cases of in situ breast cancer). Approximately 180,000 of these patients undergo breast conserving surgery (BCS), also called lumpectomy. Multiple recent studies show that a staggering 20-70% of the ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A novel approach is needed to overcome the deficiencies of protein production technology and ensure the produced enzymes fold into physiologically effective three-dimensional conformations. We discovered that incorporation of novel archaeal chaperones into a host-vector system and into in vitro enzymatic reactions helps both to recover proteins from inclusion b ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent cancer therapies have focused on using biologics to target specific signal transduction pathways implicated in the tumor development or progression. For example, recombinant fusion proteins consisting of the extracellular domain of the immunoregluatory proteins and the constant (Fc) domain of immunoglobulin (IgG) represent a growing class of protein ther ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Through more than 5 years of research, we have developed a new cardiovascular procedure termed quantitative three-dimensional (3D) stress echocardiography (echo). Because of exceedingly high computational demands, the procedure remains clinically nonviable despite our mature academic research. The objective of this STTR project is to remove the computation bott ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The USRDS (US Registry of Kidney Failure Patients) states that at the end of 2005, there were 314,000 (prevalent) hemodialysis patients in the U.S., with 97,000 newly diagnosed (incident) end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients receiving hemodialysis. Unfortunately, the one year survival for hemodialysis patients is 78%, which has not improved in the last decad ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The CA125 antigen is a well known marker for monitoring the recurrence and progression of epithelial ovarian cancer. It is now clear that this antigen is a repeating peptide epitope that is present within the protein backbone of the recently identified mucin MUC16. This mucin is expressed on the surface of ovarian tumor cells (hereafter referred to as csMUC16). ...