Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Augmentative and alternative communication devices with voice output (also known as Speech Generating Devices, or SGDs) enable individuals to speak by electronic means. Typical users of SGDs are individuals who have suffered from a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or who have neurodegenerative or neurodevelopmental disorders. In most cases, the user was able to ...

ABSTRACT Type-1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) affects 1.25 million patients in US with 40,000 new patients annually. Lifespan is shortened 11-13 years, due to kidney and heart disease. Tight glucose control reduces microvascular complications and adverse cardiovascular events. Insulin therapy is essential for such patients, but has shortcomings: a) only 1 in 3 patients achieve targeted glucose control ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Project Abstract: Most adults with access to the Internet have used it to search for health information, and half of these queries are for friends or family of the searcher. Unfortunately, access to the Internet varies by socioeconomic status, hence the well quantified digital divide: 65% of white adults in the United States searched online for health infor ...

While studies support the efficacy of comprehensive, school-wide interventions in reducing bullying, these types of programs can require significant time and financial resources for implementation, resulting in barriers to providing school-based bullying prevention, especially in low-income and rural communities. Additionally, although training bystanders to act as “defenders” on behalf of tar ...

ABSTRACT Intestinal stomas such as ileostomies and colostomies are openings of the intestinal tract surgically exteriorized onto the abdominal surface to divert enteric content away from distal cancer, obstruction, inflammation, and infection 5. In the US alone, about 1.5 million people have stomas14. Prolapse, or protrusion, of the bowel through the stoma is a common complication that can cause p ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Over 7.5 million high school students participate in high school sports programs and an additional 2 million students join these athletic teams each year. Adolescent athletes are at risk for using performance enhancing drugs, such as anabolic steroids, unregulated sport supplements, and illicit drugs and alcohol. Unfortunately, few evidence-based substance abus ...

Abstract/SummaryOral cancer kills over 8,000 people in the USA and 120,000 people worldwide every year. Over 90% of oral cancers are caused by oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), and these cells are notoriously resistant to chemotherapeutic agents. Radiation and surgery are used to treat oral cancer patients, but cause disfigurations and sequelae that drastically decrease the quality of life for ...

Pancreatic cancer is soon to be the second leading cause of cancer-related death with an overall median survival of 8 - 11 months. For 70% of patients, systemic chemotherapy is the only option and this mainly relieves the symptoms and/or slightly extends survival, rather than cures the patients. One of the hallmarks of PDAC is extensive fibrosis that comprises up to 80% of the tumor. Cancer-associ ...

Project Summary/AbstractThe opioid epidemic is a growing public health crisis with dramatic increase in overdose deaths caused by potent opioids like fentanyl. Currently, the standard treatment for opioid-induced respiratory depression is naloxone, a µ-opioid receptor antagonist. However, naloxone is less effective against potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl and induces withdrawal in chronic o ...

PROJECT SUMMARY The Immuno-oncology (IO) arena affords a new and exciting approach to stimulate the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. The generation of anti-cancer T cells is predominantly triggered by phagocytosed cancer cells stimulating innate immune signaling pathways in professional antigen presenting cells (APC’s). This signaling process is largely governed by STING (stimulator o ...