Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The use of dietary supplements has become increasingly popular in the US, and these supplements are not subject to stringent pre-marketing testing or post-marketing surveillance. More than a third of American adults report using some form of CAM, with total visits to CAM providers each year now exceeding those to primary-care physicians. An estimated 15 million ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): DNA cloning, also known as gene splicing or recombinant DNA technology, is crucial for all aspects of biomedical and biotechnology research. For example, DNA cloning has been of central importance for sequencing the human genome, generating safer vaccines, identifying genes involved in cancer and many other diseases, and producing therapeutic drugs such as insu ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This Phase I SBIR proposal will yield a prototype of a fully synthetic simulation-based training system to teach proper assessment, diagnosis and treatment of incipient lesions and true dental caries. IDEA International, Inc., in conjunction with the Harvard Dental School and others with experience in the simulation and virtual environment business, will create ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The objective of this project is to demonstrate a methodology for improving the quality of retinal images taken with standard fundus camera. Kestrel has developed a family of algorithms that perform image retinal enhancement through the implementation of a methods that are inspired from human visual system mechanisms. Standard retinal images often suffer from i ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The broad objective of this proposed research is to determine the effect of sodium thiosulfate on kidney stone formation. The drug will initially be studied in a rat model of nephrolithiasis and if the drug is shown to reduce risk of new stone formation we will study the drug in patients with nephrolithiasis. The long term goal is to bring a new therapy for kid ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): RNA Interference (RNAi) promises to become a powerful approach to rational drug design. One significant drawback to RNAi is that its effect on gene expression is rarely 100% potent. This limitation, observed widely, is problematic when a complete cessation of gene expression is desired or required. A major goal of this proposal is to develop targeted strategies ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We propose to develop technology that uses the camera function of a cellular phone to read a special graphical code on the label of a prescription medication container. This code would trigger the retrieval of label information, saved on a remote server, which after being run through a text-to-speech engine, would be read aloud to the user through the phone. We ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The objective of TruTouch Technologies, Inc. is to develop a new, more accurate, and cost-effective technology for noninvasive measurement of alcohol in human subjects. The TruTouch noninvasive measurement device offers the promise of reduced measurement time, elimination of safety concerns regarding handling of bodily fluids, and simplification of the alcohol ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is a need for a highly sensitive (> 90%) and specific (> 90%) long term biomarker to both detect and monitor individuals who are heavy users of alcohol. Monitoring short term (3-5 days) alcohol use and abuse by impaired professionals by using urine ethyl glucuronide (EtG) has been shown to be both sensitive and specific (> 90%). Recently evidence has emer ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Medical diagnostics and monitoring are critical components in modern medicine. Adequate medical devices are needed that are compact, light weight, easy to operate, reliable and therefore suitable to be operated outside of hospitals directly in doctors offices. Breath analysis is a noninvasive, patient friendly and safe method to diagnose and monitor several dis ...