Award Data

AbstractTreatment of non-resectable recurrent/metastatic solid cancers is currently palliative only and there is an urgent unmet need for novel mechanisms of action and additional paradigm shifting therapeutic options. Antigen- targeting cancer immunotherapies such as bi-specific antibodies (eg Bi-specific T cell engager or BiTE’s) provide a unique approach for cancer immunotherapy. However, app ...

Internet-based TRAC (i-TRAC): Interactive Emotion Regulation Skills Training to Improve AdolescentSexual Health Adolescence is a critical developmental period during which behavioral patterns are formed that have powerful influences on current and future health. This is particularly true for sexual behavior, which is affected by the biological changes of puberty as well as normative developmental ...

Project SummaryEpilepsy is one of the most common brain disorders. Current drugs have limited efficacy. Identifying new targeted drugs that can be used as safer, more effective therapies is in urgent unmet need. Selective inhibition of the transient receptor potential canonical 3 (TRPC3) emerges as a novel strategy to impede epilepsy. However, the currently best selective TRPC3 inhibitor, Pyr3, ha ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Minor injuries to articular cartilage can initiate a catabolic cascade, causing small defects to progress into larger, more symptomatic defects. Pain, lesion progression, and accelerated joint deterioration may be avoided with strategies that repair small defects with hyaline-like cartilage. The repair of chondral defects using arthroscopic techniques, performed in a minimally inva ...

Project summary Currently available optical components limit biomedical imaging. In particular, in neurobiology, standard microscope components limit the field-of-view and speed of imaging of neuronal activity. Through prior work on BRAIN Initiative project, we have developed approaches for new optical components that expand the field-of-view 5 to 50 times over standard microscopes, with no loss i ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Crohn’s disease (CD) is a chronic autoimmune disease in which cells of the immune system attack gut tissue leading to diarrhea, fatigue, pain, and weight loss. CD affects up to one million Americans and is a type of inflammatory bowel disease. CD is driven by CD4 T cells with a significant role for TH1 and TH17 cells and additional involvement of B cells. Current therapies for CD ...

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT Positron-emission tomography (PET) studies play a critical role in many areas of neurological health by enabling quantitative in vivo measurements of specific neuroreceptor systems (e.g. receptor density, drug occupancy, endogenous ligand occupancy) to (i) evaluate fundamental hypotheses about disease or (ii) aid in the development of novel treatments targeting those rec ...

Abstract There is an unmet need to develop treatments for senile osteoporosis, a disorder characterized by an age-related reciprocal decrease in osteogenesis and increase in bone marrow fat. Senile osteoporosis resembles disuse osteopenia, suggesting its pathogenesis involves impaired bone mechanosensing. We discovered that the polycystin heterotrimeric complex (1PC1+3PC2) functions as a mechanose ...

Project Summary/Abstract Most infants currently rely on infant formula (IF) to meet their nutritional needs. However, existing infant formula is functionally inferior because it lacks breast milk bioactive proteins that are crucial to infant health and development. Consequently, formula-fed infants have increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Current technology limits the ability to add bioacti ...

PROJECT SUMMARY We propose to develop a novel non-contact, label-free multimodality imager that provides real-time intraoperative identification of nerves within the surgical field-of-view to facilitate the prevention of unintended nerve damage (termed iatrogenic nerve injury) during surgical procedures, as they are a major source of postsurgical complications, e.g., chronic pain. In the United St ...