Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Over 60,000 prosthetic grafts, which are primarily comprised of polyethylene terephthalate (polyester) or expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE), are implanted in the United States each year. Unfortunately, these grafts continue to have high failure rates due to secondary complications associated with acute thromboses and incomplete, unregulated cellular prol ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Neuro Devices, Inc. will construct a dynamic sweat test (DST) for early detection of peripheral neuropathy. Neuropathy is detected by measuring the rate and volume of sweat secreted by single sweat glands (SGs) under the control of sudomotor nerves. The test has a major advantage over other tests of nerve function because SGs are accessible for analysis on ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cancer is America's second leading cause of death. Many approved cancer drugs, such as bortezomib (Velcade), are cytotoxic agents that kill normal cells as well as tumor cells. Therapeutic benefit depends on tumor cellsbeing more sensitive than normal cells, thereby allowing clinical responses to be achieved at relatively safe drug doses; however, damage t ...

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Cancer is the second leading cause of death after heart disease in the US Chemotherapy is a mainstay of treatment after surgical removal of tumors but the balance of clinical benefit versus disabling or life threatening side effects is often uncertain Genotyping of cancers to identify mutated oncogenes has enabled an era of targeted therapy Drugs targeting ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. There is a clear need for more effective therapies to treat deadly pancreatic cancer disease. MicroRNAs (miRNA or miR) are a large group of short, noncoding RNAs that control posttranscriptional gene expression in human cells, and there is increasing evidence for the exi ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Infections associated with medical devices can be serious and even fatal. Catheter colonization and production of a biofilm on the surface of a catheter shortly after implantation are normally the prelude for infections. A number of antimicrobial-treated catheters have been developed to combat these infections, however, many of them have limited clinical effica ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Several disorders in reproductive medicine are results of changes in smooth muscle contractile activity. Increased myometrial contraction can lead to preterm labor, which affects 12% of the US population. However, the mechanisms involved in the transition from uterine quiescence to contractility at the onset of labor are not well-known. As a result, the managem ...

ABSTRACT: Energy issues have been at the center of the national security debate and as the largest single consumer of energy in the United States, the DOD recognizes the need to reduce its reliance on fossil fuel. For a number of years, the department has been making steady progress at decreasing its fossil fuel footprint which has seen solar energy and the use of photovoltaic cells emerge as a ...

ABSTRACT: To fabricate transparent ceramics composed of anisotropic laser gain media, the crystal orientations of micro-domains should be aligned identically. Current method involve application of high magnetic field. Texas Biochemicals Inc. recently developed a novel technology to produce faceted hexagonal prism c axis oriented Yb: Sr-FAP [Yb: Sr5(PO4)3F nanocrystallites and sintered into transp ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and the Surgical Navigation and Robotics Laboratory (SNR) at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) propose to develop and test a Smart Template to guide transperineal targeted prostate biopsiesand subsequent therapy under magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The project aims to solve the problem of poor diagnostic yield in prostate b ...