Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Treatment of alcohol use disorders (AUDs), commonly referred to as alcoholism, has been hampered by alcohol's promiscuous pharmacological effects and the complex etiology of addiction. People drink in excess for a variety of reasons, and an approach that targets more of these reasons will have greater commercial success than an approach that only targets a sole ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The main objective of this proposal is to develop a novel cancer vaccine, ApoVax-SVN(tm) based on the use of a proprietary costimulatory chimeric ligand, 4-1BBL, designed to specifically deliver survivin, a tumor associated antigen (TAA) to professional antigen-presenting cells (APCs) and activate them for the generation of an effective anti-tumor immune respon ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this Phase II project is to develop a novel R1-based method for MRI quantification of postinfarct myocardial viability using a commercially available contrast agent Gd(DTPA). The commercial embodiment of this method will be a software package that will convert a set of 2D cardiac MRI images to a 3D myocardial viability map, the Percent Infa ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The integrated scientific team of INphoton, LLC will develop standard operating procedures for intravital multiphoton microscopy assays quantifying fluorescent drug delivery, cellular uptake, intracellular distribution, metabolism, and physiologic/therapeutic effects within the kidney of live rats. Refinement of some existing assays will be necessary for commer ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Alcoholic liver damage (ALD) is among the top ten causes of death in the USA, but existing therapeutic interventions are relatively ineffective. Hepatocytes are susceptible to damage probably because they have a high level of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) which metabolizes alcohol to form acetaldehyde and reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are both cytotoxic. C ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Alcoholism is a complex disease and anti-relapse treatments should recognize this. For example, depression is a frequent precipitant of relapse (1) and is the most common co-morbid psychiatric disorder in alcoholism. An anti-relapse agent with antidepressant properties might therefore be valuable, specifically for this large subpopulation. In this regard, the ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The baculovirus expression vector system (BEVS) is one of the most powerful and versatile eukaryotic expression systems. The BEVS is being used to produce antigens for vaccine development, to manufacture human therapeutics, to develop faster acting biological insecticides, and as a protein expression system for a multitude of research projects. However, a limit ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The major barriers to preventing or treating Alzheimer's disease (AD) are its unknown pathogenesis/etiology and the lack of an objective, sensitive and specific biomarker of the disease, particularly at the early stages when therapeutic interventions would likely have the greatest efficacy. The basic hypothesis of this proposal is that levels of a novel protein ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Chronic sleep disturbances are experienced by 40% to 70% of the oldest people in the population, over 65 years. Light treatment devices are available in the market, but they are expensive, are generally glaring because they use inefficient light sources. Further, they require that users be seated in front of the device for at least 30-60 minutes, reducing compl ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Alzheimer disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease in the elderly. To date, no satisfactory treatment is available for AD. One of the pathological hallmarks of AD is deposits of amyloid protein (Aa) in neuritic plaques and cerebral vessels. Increasing lines of evidence support the notion that Aa and its precursor (APP) play pathogenetic roles i ...