Award Data

Project Summary Immunoregulation, i.e., balanced expression of regulatory and effector T cells, is thought to be compromised in modern high-income settings due in part to reduced contact with commensal and environmentally derived bacteria, also known as “old friends”. Failed immunoregulation is thought to be one factor contributing to recent increases in stress-related and chronic inflammatory ...

Summary The recent proliferation of next-generation sequencing (NGS) - based methods for the analysis of gene expression, chromatin structure and protein-DNA interactions has created tremendous opportunities for gaining novel insights into basic biology, health, and disease. However, analysis of the resulting data requires computational expertise that many traditional biologists do not possess. He ...

PROJECT SUMMARY An estimated 30 million people in the United States suffer from some form of peripheral neuropathy, a condition that develops as a result of damage to the peripheral nervous system. The top two major causes of peripheral neuropathy in the US are diabetes mellitus (both T1DM and T2DM) and chemotherapeutic agents. Currently, there are no FDA-approved treatments to prevent or reverse ...

Project Summary Prostate cancer is one of the most commonly occurring forms of cancer, accounting for 21% of all cancer in men. The Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS) aims to standardize reporting of prostate cancer using multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI). However, the in-depth analysis, as demanded by PI-RADS, remains challenging due to the complexity and heter ...

The lack of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) appropriate for youth with neurodevelopmental disabilities (DD) and related cognitive impairments including Down syndrome (DS) poses a significant problem for healthcare research and practice. Parents and other professionals do not identify the same needs as youth, and failure to engage youth with DD in healthcare evaluation compromises healthc ...

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Early childhood mental health problems constitute a significant public health concern with wide-ranging impacts on functioning both concurrently and later in life. Although childhood mental health is influenced by a variety of factors, the quality of relationships with caregivers plays a critical role. Critical, coercive, and conflictual parent- child interactions have bee ...

Lyme disease (LD) is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in the United States, with up to 300,000 cases a year. LD is caused by several species of the spirochete bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (the Lyme borreliae), which are transmitted by ticks from animal (bird, rodent) reservoirs to human hosts. While a short course of antibiotics is usually effective in eliminating the bacteria a ...

PROJECT ABSTRACT Family caregivers face daunting challenges in caring for persons with Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, there is no widely available mechanism to provide real-time, context sensitive support to informal AD caregivers that can address the specific care needs of each AD patient. To address this critical gap, we developed CareVirtue, an innovative web/mobile application for family ca ...

Pathological hallmarks of Alzheimerandapos;s disease (AD) include extracellular deposits of Aβ peptides, intraneuronal aggregates of abnormally phosphorylated tau protein and neuroinflammation. Most proposed AD disease modifying therapies have focused on strategies that reduce brain Aβ/amyloid or tau pathological accumulation. However, such approaches have been unsuccessful in late stage AD clin ...

RA is one of the most common chronic autoimmune disorders that can lead to complete joint destruction and severe disability if untreated. There is no cure for RA and up to 50% of RA patients do not respond to anti-TNF therapies as circulating Th-17/IL-17 levels are highly elevated subsequent to TNF blockade. For this subset of RA patients, disruption of a novel pathway that impairs the synergy bet ...