Award Data

PROJECT SUMMARY Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the most common neurological disease of early adulthood and is mediated by autoimmune mechanisms that lead to demyelination and neuronal damage in the central nervous system, resulting in progressive neurological dysfunction. There is no cure for the disease and current treatments focus on preventing future immunological attacks, mainly by suppressing the ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Hemorrhage due to cerebral aneurysm rupture is a devastating condition with high mortality. For the more than 30,000 patients in the US who are diagnosed annually with an aneurysm, treatment consists of preventing rupture, and increasingly relies of endovascular techniques. However, treatment durability is unknown with recurrence estimated at 16-40% and the re-treatment of 10-20%. ...

Abstract Influenza is the cause of considerable morbidity and mortality globally. Certain groups, i.e., infants, pregnant young women, and older adults are especially at risk for severe disease. Despite immunization being the most effective and economical prophylactic approach, vaccines often provide less than optimal defense against an influenza illness, with efficacies ranging from 10-60%. This ...

Open-angle glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide, affecting nearly 70 million individuals. Nonsynonymous mutations in the myocilin gene lead to the most common hereditary form of open-angle glaucoma and account for 3-4% of all cases. Disease-causing mutations, localized to its olfactomedin domain (mOLF), destabilize the myocilin protein, leading to its misfolding and accumula ...

Project Summary Genetic and pathologic evidence in andapos;pureandapos; tauopathies such as Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), Corticobasilar Degeneration (CBD) and some cases of Fronto-temporal Dementia (FTD) directly implicate tau as causing neuronal cell death, while in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) tau accumulation correlates with development and progression of cognitive impairment. Because of ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Graft-vs-Host-Disease (GVHD) is a frequent and life-threatening complication of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), a procedure that often represents the best treatment option for patients suffering from hematological malignancies. Even when HLA-matched family or unrelated donors are available, an unsatisfactorily high frequency (30-40%) of transplant recipients still d ...

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Peripheral artery disease (PAD) affects nearly 12 million people in the United States. One of the most common surgical therapies is peripheral artery bypass grafting (PABG). Some patients are eligible for less invasive treatment options like angioplasty, but patients with calcified lesions are not. In patients that do receive PABG, approximately 20% fail within the first y ...

PROJECT SUMMARY There is an increased interest in peptide medicines in pharmaceutical research and development (Randamp;D) because peptides are recognized as highly selective and efficacious, and at the same time relatively safe and well tolerated. Chemo-enzymatic peptide synthesis (CEPS) using peptide ligases features excellent purity and yield, thus becoming an attractive method to replace tradi ...

Project Summary Natural products (NPs) and derivatives thereof provide a rich source of chemical matter for drug discovery and development. Over the past 30 years, NP-derived drugs have accounted for more than 35% of FDA approvals. Despite their demonstrated importance, development of new NPs has slowed over the past 15 years due to the lack of efficient methods for discovery, production, and opti ...

RA is one of the most common chronic autoimmune disorders that can lead to complete joint destruction and severe disability if untreated. There is no cure for RA and up to 50% of RA patients do not respond to anti-TNF therapies as circulating Th-17/IL-17 levels are highly elevated subsequent to TNF blockade. For this subset of RA patients, disruption of a novel pathway that impairs the synergy bet ...