Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Increasing evidence indicates that systemic inflammation and the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which becomes the target of overreacting or misguided immune cells that determine BBB failure and immune extravasations into the brain parenchyma, are involved in the pathogenesis of neurological diseases such as meningitis, inflammation, Alzheimer's disease, and multipl ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Over 1,437,180 patients were diagnosed with cancer in 2008; over half were solid tumors. Cancer patients experience a number of life-altering symptoms during chemotherapy. Treatments have become more aggressive, are administered in outpatient settings, and in patients' homes. Despite pretreatment supportive care regimens for anemia, neutropenia, nausea and vomi ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Nonlinear optical microscopy techniques (such as two-photon florescence) are being used to acquire volumetric (i.e. three dimensional) images that probe several hundred microns into scattering tissue. These techniques are being combined with fast acquisition schemes to allow imaging of live, moving specimens at high NA. This combination allows for high-resoluti ...

Project Summary Incubators have been in use since the 19th century and have significantly improved survival for premature infants. However, incubator lighting systems still can still be improved. Proposed is a project to develop and test the feasibility and acceptability of a solid state lighting (SSL) system for use with neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) incubators. The system would 1) promote ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Disorders of the central nervous system such as spasticity involve both neurological and muscular changes. In clinic, spasticity is routinely evaluated using the Ashworth scale and tendon reflex scale. In general, tendon reflexes have been widely used to evaluate neurological state and diagnose various neurological disorders including stroke, spinal cord injuri ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The most common artificial voice source for post-laryngectomy speech rehabilitation is the hand-held buzzer or electrolarynx (EL). This device is relatively easy to use and enables most laryngectomees to verbally communicate, but with reduced intelligibility and markedly degraded naturalness. In addition, EL speech is often described as robotic and monotone, at ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Crystallization, followed by subsequent structure determination, is a major step in understanding the structure-function relationship of macromolecules. Understanding macromolecule structure has become a key part in the development of new pharmaceuticals, and is a major area of NIH research. Crystallization however is also the rate limiting step, despite techn ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This STTR program will test the utility of a low-cost device for noninvasive liver iron measurements, by using the device to determine the prevalence of iron overload in African Americans. African American iron overload is both an under-studied health issue in a medically underserved population, and an example of the wider problem of mild to moderate iron overl ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Osteoarthritis (OA) is the leading cause of chronic disability in the United States. A clinical goal in the treatment and prevention of OA is to develop replacement cartilage using tissue engineering (TE) technologies. Although TE cartilage presently lacks the mechanical stability of native cartilage, studies have demonstrated that mechanical stability can be e ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This Phase I STTR Grant Proposal requests 100,000 support for WestFace Medical Device to construct and test the WestFace Imaging Adaptor in conjunction with Ruikang K. Wang, PhD and his laboratory at the University ofWashington. Utilizing optical coherence tomography (OCT), the patented OCT Adaptor (USPTO Pats. # 7,682,089, # 8,057,107, #8,235,602) provides re ...