Award Data

PROJECT ABSTRACT Glaucoma is a common neurodegenerative disease which is the 2nd leading cause of blindness in the United States. With the aging baby boomer population, these numbers will continue to increase exponentially over the next few decades. With glaucomatous progression, there is ultimately damage to the optic nerve which results in peripheral vision loss. It has been shown in many prior ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Each year in the United States over 270,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and over 40,000 will die from the disease. While multiple forms of breast cancer exist, a common theme in most of the forms involvesaberrations in signal transduction pathways that lead to inhibition of the programmed cell death process known as apoptosis. Apoptosis is a care ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): According to the American Cancer Society, half of all men and one-third of all women in the United States will develop cancer in their lifetime. While chemotherapy has dramatically improved the survival rate of cancer patients, it comes at the cost of severe toxicities and in some cases poor response rates. In order to address these shortcomings, equal investme ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I project takes an innovative approach at tumor targeting by investigating an entirely novel tumor targeting platform that utilizes bone marrow derived, circulating tumor homing cells as natural vectors. Through screening of phage display peptide libraries we have identified high affinity peptide ligands that bind these cells with high specificity. The ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project proposes to improve intrinsic crop yield through metabolic engineering of photosynthetic pathways. Genes encoding five rate-limiting enzymes for photosynthesis and starch synthesis will be co-expressed constitutively or in a cell-specific manner in a model C4 plant species. Multiple metabolic pathways will be altered to simultaneously ...

The innovation proposed in this Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project will harness the popularity and ubiquity of mobile microgames on hand-held devices for educating children on self-management of chronic health conditions. Millions of children suffer from chronic conditions which require regular management, such as diabetes, or from broader states of poor health caused by obesity. ...

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Complete achromatopsia is an autosomal recessive inherited congenital disorder of retinal cone photoreceptors Patients with complete achromatopsia experience extreme light sensitivity and daytime blindness and best visual acuity under non bright light conditions is usually or worse and generally stable over time In addition to poor acuity hypersensit ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Standard microfracture is a first-line, widely used and cost-effective surgical technique for repairing damaged articular cartilage, but, it is limited by decreased long-term efficacy and limited applicability in largerlesions. This leads to a burgeoning economic burden associated with primary and follow-up treatment costs, estimated at more than 40 billion dol ...

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Retinal prosthetic devices currently under development are designed to bypass the non functioning portion of the visual pathway photoreceptor layer in individuals suffering from diseases including retinitis pigmentosa RP and age related macular degeneration AMD Current devices enable patients to only see object positions and read large letters and furth ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Diabetes mellitus (DM) leads to a 3-4 fold higher risk of experiencing ischemic stroke. In addition, DM stroke patients are more prone to develop more and earlier white matter (WM) high-intensity lesions than non DM stroke patients. Treatment of stroke with tissue plasminogen activator (rtPA) at 2-3 hours after stroke decreases lesion volume in non-DM rats. How ...