Award Data

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 ...

Pterygium is a common ocular surface disease with abnormal fibrovascular growth on the cornea that affects about 10 million individuals in the US. Later-stage disease impairs vision and early to middle stage disease causes worry and anxiety about eye appearance in patients. The current standard of care is surgical removal of lesion tissue. However, rapidly growing lesions recur in about 10% of pat ...

PROJECT SUMMARY More than 40% of individuals as young as 60 start to experience some sort of cognitive decline. Among these, nearly one person in five develops mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a potential precursor of severe neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and dementia. Today, AD and dementia represent an economic burden of $277 B/year in the U.S. alone. Nothing can be ...

ABSTRACTShunts placed in patients to manage cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) drainage are indispensable in medical practice, however, they are susceptible to infection caused by local microflora leading to high mortality and morbidity. Shunts are generally made of carbon or silicone rich polymers to maintain desirable properties such as flexibility, but these inert polymers offer an attractive refuge for ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Tauopathies are a group of neurodegenerative disorders sharing the common pathology of the tau protein in the central nervous system. The most prominent tauopathy is Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that affects nearly 6 million Americans and more than 30 million people worldwide. Additional tauopathies include frontotemporal lobar degeneration with tau, Pick’s disease, progressive sup ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Head injuries, including nearly 4 million concussions per year, are common among the nearly 40 million participants in organized youth sports in the United States. Despite recent technologies marketed to reduce concussion risk, head injuries continue to rise among youth athletes. Furthermore, studies to improve protective equipment have largely focused on adult populations, leading ...

Project Summary Abstract Nymirum will utilize its technology platform to identify and optimize a drug-like, orally available small molecule that binds toxic CUG repeat RNAs to rescue myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) derived mis-splicing and treat the disease. DM1 is a rare genetic disorder that leads to progressive muscle degeneration, cardiovascular disease, severe cognitive disabilities, insulin ...

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 There is an urgent need for new approaches to treat acute human pain without the risk of Substance Use Disorders (SUDs). The most effective approved pain pharmaceuticals, including narcotics and anesthetics, are not neuron-specific and consequently suffer from off-target effects like addiction, inhibition of motor neurons, and destruction of the surrounding tissues. When inflammati ...

Project Summary In the NIDA SBIR Phase I project, Arborsense will develop a portable sweat-based screening device for rapid, non-invasive, point-of-need, and quantitative detection of drugs of abuse. The use and abuse of potentially- addictive substances has become a national crisis with immense social (~93,000 deaths in 2020) and economic costs (~$400B annually). Consequently, regular drug-use te ...