Award Data

Project SummaryEpilepsy is one of the most common brain disorders. Current drugs have limited efficacy. Identifying new targeted drugs that can be used as safer, more effective therapies is in urgent unmet need. Selective inhibition of the transient receptor potential canonical 3 (TRPC3) emerges as a novel strategy to impede epilepsy. However, the currently best selective TRPC3 inhibitor, Pyr3, ha ...

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is a devastating acute inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract resulting in intestinal necrosis, systemic sepsis and multi-system organ failure found mostly in infants born prematurely. Despite modern medical advances in the past decade, the etiology remains elusive and morbidity and mortality are still unacceptably high. It has been concluded that the ...

Abstract There is an unmet need to develop treatments for senile osteoporosis, a disorder characterized by an age-related reciprocal decrease in osteogenesis and increase in bone marrow fat. Senile osteoporosis resembles disuse osteopenia, suggesting its pathogenesis involves impaired bone mechanosensing. We discovered that the polycystin heterotrimeric complex (1PC1+3PC2) functions as a mechanose ...

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT With the increased use of mobile health (mHealth) apps to improve health outcomes, protecting private health data is becoming increasingly important. These mHealth apps are offered by healthcare providers and used by patients for various reasons such as paying bills, scheduling appointments, sending messages to providers, accessing lab results, and viewing prescriptions an ...

PROJECT SUMMARY We propose to develop a novel non-contact, label-free multimodality imager that provides real-time intraoperative identification of nerves within the surgical field-of-view to facilitate the prevention of unintended nerve damage (termed iatrogenic nerve injury) during surgical procedures, as they are a major source of postsurgical complications, e.g., chronic pain. In the United St ...

Project SummaryTheranostics combines molecular targeted diagnostic and therapeutic radionuclides for imaging and ther- apy in advanced malignancies, with a projected US market of more than $6.7B. Currently, metastatic castra- tion-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) with FDA approved lutetium-177 (177Lu)-based peptide receptor targeting radionuclide therapy (PRRT), represents the largest market. Pro ...

Perinatal brain injury resulting in mental retardation and cerebral palsy is the most severe disability in children and affects 40-148 in preterm and 1–2/1000 in full term infants. This places a huge burden on society, emphasizing the critical need for improved prevention/treatment strategies to decrease perinatal brain injury. Hypothermia (HT) is the only FDA approved therapy to attenuate brain ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Hydrocephalus is a devastating condition characterized by a buildup of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the brain. The most utilized treatment for hydrocephalus is the CSF shunt in which a catheter diverts excess CSF from the ventricles of the brain through a one-way valve to an area in the body that can reabsorb the fluid (most commonly the peritoneal cavity). Despite technological ad ...

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 ...

PROJECT SUMMARY. Fungal natural products (NPs) and enzymes are valued for their unique and diverse bioactivities. Flagship NPs command hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural and tens of billions in pharmaceutical markets per year globally, illustrating a broad appetite for fungal molecules across disparate industries. Global markets for all microbial NPs are projected to exceed $300 billi ...