Award Data

PROJECT SUMMARY Actively involving informal caregivers in direct patient care at the bedside in the intensive care unit (ICU) has the potential to improve patient, informal caregiver, and health care system outcomes. Practice guidelines call for the liberal inclusion of informal caregivers as active partners in ICU care, but there is a critical, unmet need to develop tools that effectively operati ...

Abstract: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most common liver diseases in children and adults associated with diet-associated hepatic lipid accumulation (steatosis), and is a common hepatic manifestation of obesity and metabolic syndromes including diabetes. Modulation Therapeutics is developing a stearoyl- coenzyme A desaturase-1 (SCD1) inhibitor for the treatment of NAFLD a ...

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: Developing a Digital Training and Assessment Platform to Disseminate a Successful NIH- Supported College Preparation Model for Diversifying the U.S. Biomedical Workforce This Phase 1 SBIR project will design and test a digital training and assessment platform—HSTA Hatch—to help geographic regions outside West Virginia (WV) establish workforce development programs for grade 9-12 youth ...

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 ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Many pathogens, such as severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, spread via aerosol transmission and inflict global public health and economic consequences. SARS-CoV-2 has infected over 450 million people, led to over 6 million fatalities, and caused major economic losses. The tuberculosis-causing bacterium and longstanding global health e ...

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 ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in the world. Significant challenges remain for developing preventive or curative approaches targeting ALD. No effective treatments for ALD currently exist but for reducing alcohol consumption or liver transplantation. The current paucity of clinically relevant experimental models impedes any effort ...

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 ...

It is estimated that approximately 5-10% of all diagnosed cancers are caused by Hereditary Cancer Syndromes (HCS) that are associated with germline mutations (inherited genetic mutations passed directly from a parent to a child that create a genetic predisposition to certain types of cancer). Recent epidemiologic models indicate that 1 in 279 people may be carriers of one of the most common HCS, a ...