Award Data

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 ...

Abstract One in five Americans has chronic pain. Many pharmacological pain interventions exist but increase risk of opioid use disorder (OUD). As a result, there is an urgent need for non-addictive pain treatments. One non- addictive pain treatments is neurofeedback, or electroencephalogram (EEG) biofeedback, which trains patients to regulate brain states linked to physiological relaxation. Neurof ...

ABSTRACT: Cutaneous vascular malformations (CVM), such as port wine stain (PWS) which occurs in 0.3–0.5% of newborns, are often a cause of great concern to patients for both medical and cosmetic reasons. Laser irradiation with flashlamp-pumped pulsed dye lasers, i.e. photothermolysis therapy (PTT), is currently the gold standard treatment for PWS. Most patients with PWS, however, fail to clear c ...

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 ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Understanding of tumor molecular characteristics during a course of radiotherapy (RT) treatment is crucial to assess the efficacy of the treatment and adapt radiation dosage to optimize outcomes. Unfortunately, this cannot be routinely achieved by current diagnostic nuclear imaging modalities due to complex logistics and prohibitive costs. Alternatively, Cerenkov Emission (CE) is a ...

ABSTRACT Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a highly debilitating disease that affects about 1% of the global population, which increases up to 10% in individuals aged more than 65 years. The life expectancy for these patients is less than 10 years after diagnosis, and no specific drugs are available for pharmacologic treatment. Despite the introduction PDE5, prostacyclin analogs, and endothelin antag ...

Dual Excitation Catheter-delivered Laser Ultrasound Thrombolysis (DECLUT) for Deep VeinThrombosis (DVT) TreatmentDeep-vein thrombosis (DVT), or the formation of clots in the deep veins of the legs, affects two million Americans per year. DVT can cause pulmonary embolism (PE), which is fatal in andgt;0.1 million cases annually in the US alone, presents as sudden death in 20-25% of cases. Recent inn ...

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors have been successfully applied in clinical trials in patients with hemophilia. Two AAV based gene therapy drugs have been recently approved by the FDA. Luxturna has been valued at $850,000 for a one-time treatment for a rare form of blindness and Zolgensma at $2,100,000 for spinal muscle atrophy. Gene therapy with AAV vectors has shown a potentially huge market ...

Contact PD/PI: GILGER, BRIAN C Abstract Corneal blindness is a leading cause of global blindness, with allogeneic corneal transplantation (CT) being the most common form of tissue transplantation worldwide. Though approximately 180,000 CT surgeries are carried out each year, around 12.7 million are currently awaiting a donor cornea to undergo the operation. Still, CT surgery is accompanied by a hi ...

Hospital acquired pneumonia (HAP) is most common cause of mortality in intensive care units and the 2nd most common nosocomial infection in the US. P. aeruginosa, S. aureus (including MRSA) and other ESKAPE pathogens are common causes of HAP. The rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including MRSA, further complicates the challenges of delivering effective treatments in this patient population. ...