Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Molecular interactions form the foundation of biology and chemistry. They are central to life itself and determine catalytic activity, cellular function, and therapeutic efficacy. The vast majority of diagnostic procedures depend on some type of specific molecular interaction. Therefore, the ability to perform pure liquid-phase molecular binding analysis at hi ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Controlling mechanical signal transduction to treat osteoarthritis Abstract The TRPV4 calcium (Ca++) permeable ion channel has been shown to be expressed and functional in chondrocytes, the cells responsible for the maintenance of cartilage in weight-bearing joints. Trauma of joints with subsequent damage of cartilage, as well as chronically increased joint loa ...

This STTR Phase I proposal addresses a NASA need for improved near-to-mid IR detectors for imaging and spectroscopy. High performance IR detectors with cutoff wavelengths in the range of 2.5?5.0 microns will be developed using InGaAs / AlAsSb semiconductor materials. The proposal uses a two-pronged approach to address the problem of detector performance degradation by materials' defects, both ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Patients with infective endocarditis (IE) have a poor prognosis with one third of the patients succumbing to the infection within the first year. Treatments for endocarditis involve antibiotic therapy and/or surgery that cost upwards of 100,000 per patient; however, many cases do not respond to the antibiotic treatment and surgery poses high risks. Cases of en ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Crystallization, followed by subsequent structure determination, is a major step in understanding the structure- function relationship of macromolecules. Understanding macromolecule structure has become a key part in the development of new pharmaceuticals, and is a major area of NIH research. Crystallization however is also the rate limiting step, despite techn ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this study is to develop a tissue-engineered total joint replacement from an engineered biomaterial scaffold combined with adult bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for regeneration ofthe entire femoral surface of the hip joint. We have developed a novel three-dimensionally (3D) woven scaffold that mimics the biomechanical prop ...

Launch vehicles experience extreme acoustic loads during liftoff driven by the interaction of rocket plumes and plume-generated acoustic waves with ground structures. Currently employed predictive capabilities to model the complex turbulent plume physics are too dissipative to accurately resolve the propagation of acoustic waves throughout the launch environment. Higher fidelity liftoff acoustic a ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Characterization of human tumor samples and cell lines in combination with inhibitor studies in animal models has established a central role for the Hh pathway in a vast array of cancer types, including small-cell lung, pancreatic, oesophageal, prostate, breast, colon, liver and ovarian cancers. Hh signaling is now implicated in approximately 20-25% of all can ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Early diagnosis of infectious disease is critical to patient outcome. An important early question is - is it a fungus, a bacterium or a virus? A rapid answer to this question would allow preemptive treatment that cansave lives. The goal of this project is a rapid and inexpensive immunoassay that will use serum as a sample to broadly identify the presence of ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Medical drugs and devices are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) based on data from multicenter clinical trials. In 2010, U.S. spending on clinical trials was approximately 25 billion. Over the past decade the efficiency of clinical trials has been improved by electronic data capture (EDC) systems, whose use has increased from 38% to 61% ...