Award Data

Project Summary: Cancer is a leading cause of death both in the United States and across the world, claiming over 600,000 and 8 million deaths each year, respectively. Delayed detection of cancer progression or recurrence after treatment contributes to increased morbidity and rapid death, but re-biopsy or repeat surgery is usually not possible due to severe risks. The accuracy of conventional imag ...

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Substance use is a significant problem among Latinx and Hispanics due to the disproportionate number of physical harms and negative consequences associated with substance use relative to other racial/ethnic groups. However, Hispanics are less likely than other racial/ethnic groups to seek treatment for substance use, regardless of the substance(s) they use, and only 75% as ...

Development of a PCR assay for quantitative detection of HBV cccDNA There is an urgent and unmet need for an effective method to detect hepatitis B virus (HBV) cccDNA in the blood. HBV infection affects nearly 350 million people worldwide. Chronic HBV infection is a major risk factor for the development of severe liver diseases such as cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, which has a poor survi ...

Abstract. Chagas disease is a neglected tropical disease and has been designated as a research priority by NIAID and an SBIR Research Topic of Interest. Six million individuals are infected and 8,000 deaths were caused by Chagas in 2015 in mostly Central and South America by advanced forms of the disease such as Chagas hemorrhagic fever. The cost associated with Chagas disease treatment globally i ...

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Immunosuppressed transplant patients have heightened susceptibility to environmental pathogens as well as adventitious agents traveling with donor tissues or resident in the recipient. Traditional therapies target the virus and are thereby limited in effectiveness to the specific virus targeted. Evrys Bio is developing orally administered, broad-spectrum antivirals that ta ...

Project Summary Analysis of complex cellular processes in understanding disease, development of drugs, or testing efficacy of therapies often requires dynamic measurements of both cellular markers and cellular products. The ability to synchronously and rapidly conduct such measurements in complex cell- containing samples using a single instrumental analysis will be useful and beneficial across bio ...

Currently, in austere environments like the rural regions of Africa, there are millions of people who go blind each year due to cataract. This is an easily preventable condition if they receive the correct treatment in a timely manner. Unfortunately, there is a growing shortage of ophthalmologists and other surgeons throughout the world, and in many African countries unsupervised non-physicians pe ...

Abstract Congestive heart failure (CHF) caused by a loss of cardiac function typically due to infarction (MI) remains the leading cause of death in the West. Current therapies for CHF including heart transplant are highly costly and invasive and still yield five-year mortality rates of 50%. Stem cell therapy for CHF has yielded disappointing results, likely due to inadequate implant engraftment in ...

Project Summary. Natural products are the major source of drug molecules. Currently, 64% of small molecule drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration are natural products or their derivatives. Currently, the dominant technique for discovering novel natural products is bioactivity-guided isolation. However, this technique is limited to the high abundance molecular products of microbial / pl ...

PROJECT SUMMARYPanorama has developed a groundbreaking platform that combines big data and genetic sequencing to identify the RNA sequence of splice events, a cause of up to 50% of genetic diseases. These events are believed to be the cause of diseases such as Becker muscular dystrophy, Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The p ...