Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Chronic alcohol consumption can cause progressive liver damage, resulting in steatohepatitis and cirrhosis, which can lead to other more fatal complications such as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Progression of alcoholic liver disease (ALD), like many chronic forms of liver disease, is driven by hepatocyte damage that promotes inflammatory responses and the ac ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Strength and balance training has been demonstrated to prevent physical decline and falls in older adults. The majority of fall prevention studies have focused on supervised group or home-based exercise interventions utilizing qualified personal. The implementation of these interventions on a community-wide level is limited due to home-bound status because of ...

ABSTRACT More than 20 million elderly people in the US have significant hearing loss but only 20% use hearing aids. Of these, 35 - 50% are dissatisfied with them, which often results in the hearing aids being returned within the trial period or left in-the-drawer . With untreated hearing loss resulting in a 200% - 300% increase in the risk of dementia, depression, and falls, and severe communicat ...

DESCRIPTION: The Working Group for Civilian Biodefense has identified orthopox DNA viruses such as variola as a potential bioterrorism threat, and numerous other DNA viruses, including herpes, adeno, pox, polyoma and papilloma viruses, are of general concern in a public health context, as are the possible emergence of new pathogens and the potential for development of drug resistance in existing s ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project is aimed at development of an enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for antibodies to Babesia for use as a clinical diagnostic test. Babesiosis is an emerging tick-borne parasitic disease which may cause severe to fatalillness in immunocompromised or otherwise weakened patients, and may be carried in the blood subclinically in up to 1% of the population in ende ...

DESCRIPTION: Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a common cause of serious infections in patients with immune deficiency (e.g., HIV and cancer), cystic fibrosis (CF), on mechanical ventilation or with burn wounds. While P. aeruginosa exhibits an alarming variety ofintrinsic drug resistances, aminoglycosides (AMGs) such as tobramycin and amikacin, are still effective in treating diseases caused by this patho ...

DESCRIPTION: Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a common and extremely virulent cause of serious infections in immune- compromised/suppressed patients (e.g., HIV and cancer), cystic fibrosis patients, and those on mechanical ventilation or with burn wounds. Related clinically important Gram-negative [Gr(-)] nonfermenters include species of the genera Burkholderia, Acinetobacter, and Stenotrophomonas, whic ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): HIV clade C, endemic in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent, is responsible for nearly half of all global HIV infections, and most large-scale HIV vaccine trials are targeted to clade C regions. Unfortunately, the development and trialing of candidate HIV vaccines brings with it the significant risk of vaccine-induced HIV seropositivity (VISP). VISP ...

DESCRIPTION: Androgen action is the net result of opposing pathways of steroid biosynthesis and metabolism. It is now widely recognized that testosterone (T) is an androgenic precursor of the more potent 5 -dihydrotestosterone (DHT), produced by 5 -reductase type 2. Circulating T and DHT also serve as precursors of estrogens through their conversion to estradiol and estrone by aromatase. Thus, re ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is no known cure for Osteoarthritis (OA), a debilitating disease that afflicts 27 million people and costs 125 billion, annually. In OA, the articular cartilage is degraded and it has a limited capacity to self-heal; therefore, rendering a diagnosis at a late stage is ineffective at preventing further cartilage degeneration. Currently, there are no contr ...