Award Data

PROJECT SUMMARY An estimated 30 million people in the United States suffer from some form of peripheral neuropathy, a condition that develops as a result of damage to the peripheral nervous system. The top two major causes of peripheral neuropathy in the US are diabetes mellitus (both T1DM and T2DM) and chemotherapeutic agents. Currently, there are no FDA-approved treatments to prevent or reverse ...

Obstetricians measure fetal heartrate (FHR) and uterine contractions to evaluate fetal health during pregnancy and labor. This monitoring is performed to decrease the development of complications while minimizing the need for unnecessary obstetric interventions and is especially important for women with high-risk pregnancies. However, many women, especially in rural areas, do not have the time or ...

Project Summary Despite significant cost and clear evidence of health risks associated with Cesarean section surgeries, an unnecessarily large number of infants are delivered via Cesarean section (C- Section) surgeries. The high rate of C-section in the US, relative to globally accepted norms, and the associated additional cost and complications are in part, due to high false positive rate of intr ...

AbstractThe alarming scope of the rapidly growing opioid epidemic has commanded the nation’s attention. The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers estimates that in 2015, the economic cost of the opioid crisis was over $504.0 billion (2.8% of GDP); and it is only expected to continue rising. Today, 1 in 5 fatalities amongst young adults is opioid related; with half a million fatal overdose ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Methadone remains a cornerstone of treatment for opioid use disorders (OUD). Daily or frequent supervised treatment with visual confirmation of ingestion (directly-observed therapy or “DOT”), is the standard of care for methadone treatment in federally licensed opioid treatment programs (OTPs) in the United States. DOT ensures adherence and mitigates the risk of medication pois ...

Project Summary: The main goal of this research project is to develop a new line of new stereotaxic devices for small animal research that outperforms existing devices in terms of accuracy, reproducibility, and ease of use. Advancing a tool such as an electrode, injection pipette or optical fiber through a small hole in the cranium, sometimes over long distances, and placing it precisely in a part ...

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 ...

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease. The greatest treatment potential lies in early stages before irreversible brain damage occurs. Early treatment requires early detection of the disease. Imaging holds great promise for capturing early signs of AD. This capability can be substantially strengthened by integrating neuroimages of different modalities that characteri ...

Project Summary/Abstract Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is the most prevalent adult leukemia in Western countries. Despite recent treatment advances, CLL remains incurable. In the era of emerging targeted therapies, disease progression and relapse increasingly are key challenges faced by CLL patients. Therefore, there is an ongoing need for the identification of targetable vulnerabilities in t ...

Project Summary Prostate cancer is one of the most commonly occurring forms of cancer, accounting for 21% of all cancer in men. The Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS) aims to standardize reporting of prostate cancer using multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI). However, the in-depth analysis, as demanded by PI-RADS, remains challenging due to the complexity and heter ...