Award Data

SUMMARY Patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH) experience low oxygen saturation, shortness of breath, low quality of life, and a short life span (lt10 years) following diagnosis. These patients frequently present to emergency rooms, and many are admitted to intensive care units (ICUs), straining the health care system. Despite therapy with phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors, prostacyclin analogs, a ...

Summary The proposed DE iRED program consists of university and private sector partnerships to deliver a comprehensive program that will engage and support biomedical innovators in the early stages of technology commercialization by addressing key bottlenecks in the startup process as identified both in the solicitation and by the DRIVEN Accelerator Hub. According to DRIVEN’s Voice of Customer i ...

Project Summary Project Title: Development of a Small Molecule Inhibitor of Fortilin for Atherosclerosis Treatment and Prevention. Atherosclerosis affects more than 18 million Americans and is a major cause of cardiovascular diseases and acute cardiovascular events, such as heart attack and stroke. Current interventions include changes to diet and exercise, smoking cessation, and treatment with st ...

Modern pharmaceuticals have greatly improved the quality of life for many patients suffering a variety of illnesses. Unfortunately, among the 17 most commonly prescribed drugs, only 6 are highly effective for most patients, 5 have a modest effect, and 6 show little clinical effect. Worse still, unwanted illness and death from treatment of patients with the incorrect drug or dosage causes over 275, ...

ABSTRACT The identification and removal of process-related protein impurities (PRPI) from biologic products is a critical step in drug development. Despite recent improvements in the purification and processing of biologics, the presence of immunogenic PRPI continue to raise concerns about drug safety and efficacy. We propose an innovative approach for assessing immunogenicity risk of PRPI using o ...

Abstract/Project SummaryAlong with the many benefits of a global economy hides the ever-present risk for the world wide spread of infectious disease. While significant outbreaks of the flu in the recent past involving millions of individuals could be contained, the emergence and rapid spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus revealed how vulnerable and unprepared the world population was to combat a previou ...

Pertussis (Whooping cough) is a highly contagious, airborne disease that is rapidly re-emerging as a serious public health threat in the United States. Despite high vaccine coverage, annual reported cases in the U.S. have been increasing recently, with an average of 25,000 per year from 2010-2019. This is a level unseen since the early 1960s. Diagnosis of pertussis is challenging because its early ...

There is a critical need for rapid and cost-effective means for the detection of e.g. infectious diseases at an early stage, drug overdoses, and other health related testing necessities. Thus, significant commercial opportunities exist because of the lack of these capabilities as painfully “demonstrated” in the current pandemic. Mass spectrometry (MS), because of its ability to detect hundreds ...

Abstract Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is a fatal muscle disease with an incidence of 1 in 5000 males. DMD results from mutations in the gene encoding dystrophin, a 427 kDa scaffolding protein responsible for providing a mechanical link between the muscle fiber actin cytoskeleton and laminin in the extracellular matrix. The α7β1 integrin is a transmembrane linkage system in skeletal and card ...

7. Project Summary/Abstract The encephalitic New World alphaviruses (NWAVs), consisting of Eastern, Venezuelan and Western Equine Encephalitis Viruses (EEEV, VEEV and WEEV, respectively), are transmitted by mosquitoes through rodent or bird hosts and have caused significant periodic epizootic outbreaks in equines and humans in the Americas. NWAVs can cause severe neurological disease, with fatal e ...