Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Due to morbidity and limited amounts of material, alternatives to autologous grafts for bone repair are desirable. Cells within the bone marrow are known to possess bone regenerative capacity, but they are limited in number. Increasing these osteoprogenitor cell populations through the use of ex vivo expansion technologies and combining these cells with a matri ...

The therapeutic potential of patient-specific cultured cells continues to rapidly grow for a range of medical needs, such as regenerative repair of damaged tissue, cancer, and infectious diseases. As a result, the motivation to commercialize patient-specific "cell products" is increasing rapidly as well. A large unmet need exists for the development of reliable clinical and commercial ceil manufac ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We are developing means to reduce errors in Dipole Source Localization (DSL). DSL is commonly used to analyze brain waves for clinical and research purposes. It is known from our work and the work of others that the models used to compute the DSL are not perfect, but it is not known how much the imperfect models affect the solutions obtained. Based upon our ...

Reduced-mass polymer composite materials are crucial to the success of aerospace systems for reducing vehicle weight. But, composite material adoption is inhibited because the autoclave consolidation required is prohibitively expensive for the large tanks and skins contemplated in the Next Generation Launch Technology (NGLT) Program. To remedy this, NASA-LaRC has been developing cost-effective, ...

Reduced mass composite materials are crucial to the success of aerospace systems, but their adoption is inhibited because they require autoclave consolidation, a process that is prohibitively expensive for large aerospace structure. To remedy this, NASA-LaRC has been developing cost-effective high-performance thermoplastic composite processing equipment that enables out-of-autoclave tape placemen ...

Acellent Technologies, Inc. proposes to develop a SMART TAPE system that can be used to perform rapid non-destructive evaluation in real time and provide long-term monitoring of pressure vessels in liquid rocket engines. Based on Acellent's existing SMART Layer technology, this innovative system combines a sensor network, dedicated signal processing and data analysis software to allow for real-ti ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): World-wide public health surveys point to an increasing global health burden resulting from serious brain disorders, particularly mood-related disorders such as depression. The economic burden of depression alone is immense. Of the $83.1 billion spent in 2000 on the treatment of depression and related expenses, $26.1 billion (31 percent) were direct medical cos ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Current HIV-1 therapy suffers from inadequate viral load suppression due to poor compliance, resistance, and interactions with other drugs and can lead to spread of drug-resistant strains. The current drug cocktails need to include inhibitors of viral components that are likely to slow resistance development. One such target is the HIV-1 capsid, an essential vi ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The small GTP binding protein superfamily (consisting of small, monomeric GTP hydrolyzing proteins or GTPases) regulates diverse cellular processes including gene expression, cellular proliferation, cytoskeletal reorganization, vesicle trafficking, and nucleocytoplasmic transport. Activated point mutants of Ras GTPases have been found in over 30% of all human ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent evidence suggests that the primary cause of Alzheimer's disease is the progressive accumulation of neurotpxic oligomeric assemblies of the Abeta 1-42 protein. These neurotoxic oligomeric species are known as ADDLs (Ab-derived diffusible ligands). In Tg2576 AD mice, a transgenic Alzheimer's disease animal model, memory performance declines as ADDL levels ...