Award Data

Recent foodborne illness outbreaks traced to contaminated field harvesting equipment have highlighted the need for incorporating improved sanitization practices at the time of harvest. Field- harvested specialty crops represent 50% of the top ten foods linked to major recalls and outbreaks over the past five years. Proper sanitization of outdoor harvest equipment is made complicated by operational ...

Abstract Meniscus tears are among the most common orthopedic injuries, with about 1 million occurring in the United States each year and growing at a rate of 5% annually. Shortcomings associated with the current standard of care leaves a clinical need for a new treatment option. The meniscal tissue can only be repaired in limited cases due to its healing capacity, so the most common treatment for ...

A First-in-class Topical Immunoregulatory Therapeutic for Psoriasis BioTherapeutics Inc (BTI) is an emerging biotech company that synergistically combines the power of advanced computational modeling with translational experimentation to accelerate the development of novel product candidates for precision immunology. An unmet clinical need for safer, more effective drugs for plaque psoriasis remai ...

7. Project Summary/Abstract A key component in any investigation of association and/or cause-effect relationships between the environment and health outcomes is the availability of accurate and precise models of exposure. Because the cost of collecting field data is often prohibitive, it is critical to incorporate any source of secondary information available to supplement sparse datasets. Seconda ...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, debilitating inflammatory disease with high medical and societal costs afflicting more than 1.6 million Americans. Blockade of TNFα-driven inflammation with approved anti-TNFα biologics (such as Humira®, Remicade®, Simponi®, and Enbrel®) is an effective treatment for many patients suffering from RA. However, due at least in part to the immunogenicity o ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Circadian rhythms play a vital role in promoting maternal health and managing pregnancy outcomes, including gestational diabetes, preterm birth, and postpartum depression. However, interventions to mitigate circadian rhythms disruption during pregnancy are lacking, despite readily available non-pharmacological circadian interventions. The circadian timekeeping system is strengthene ...

Summary As the COVID19 pandemic and vaccine deployment continue there is an urgent need to monitor emerging variants for their infectivity and ability to escape both prior infection and vaccine induced neutralizing antibodies. Currently, there is no way to rapidly quantify emerging variants infectivity and immune evading capacity. The standard for quantifying viral infectivity involves the use of ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Opioid and/or Stimulant Use Disorders (OUD/StUD) are chronic, recurring conditions that if left untreated, pose a significant and ongoing public health and safety threat, with costs associated with OUD alone in the US exceeding one trillion dollars annually. Virtual Reality Cue Exposure (VRCE) employs safe and controlled repeated exposure to a variety of substance use cues and envi ...

Abstract The success of cohort studies such as the NIDDK Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP) with its massive amount of samples depends on the cost and time-efficient evaluation of kidney biopsies at multiple scales. Assessing the structure of kidney tissue at the nanoscale (~10 nm) and evaluating the 3-D distribution of protein biomarkers in that context is, however, currently severely limit ...

Project Summary/AbstractRural Americans face numerous health disparities compared to their urban counterparts and are more likely to die from chronic health conditions, including substance abuse. Indeed, opioid-related mortality is highest in certain rural areas of the U.S., including Appalachia, New England, and the mountain west. A number of studies looking at morbidity and mortality provide ins ...