Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Nearly half of all college students have a diagnosable mental health problem (Blanco et al., 2008). College counseling centers (CCCs) are faced with increasing demands for services from Universities, students and parents to meet the treatment needs of their students (Beamish, 2005), in the context of increasingly severe cases and declining resources (Gallagher, ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Molecular imaging techniques have strong potential in the setting of preclinical research, primarily for drug discovery and basic science in the field of cancer research. In particular, high-frequency ultrasound is a powerful imaging modality for phenotyping and monitoring the response to experimental therapy. Relative to other molecular imaging techniques, ult ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an intractable clinical problem, typically presenting with metastasis at the time of diagnosis and exhibiting profound resistance to existing therapies. Currently, the standarddiagnostic course includes CT or MRI scans which do not have optimal sensitivity and specificity for accurately diagnosing and determining resec ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Drug developers desperately need better tools in the laboratory to improve the 90% failure rate of drugs in clinical trials. Liver toxicity is still the leading cause of drug failure, despite extensive preclinical testing in surrogate animal species. HemoShear develops human surrogate technologies for target ID and validation and screening of compounds for safe ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Trichloroethylene (TCE), one of the most common groundwater pollutants, is a known hepatotoxin and carcinogen. It has been widely used by industry and the military as a degreaser for metal parts: according to the Agencyfor Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, more than eight hundred Superfund sites in the United States are contaminated with TCE. Poplar, which ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is responsible for more than 500,000 hospitalizations and over 100,000 deaths in the United States annually. COPD is currently the fourth leading cause of death; it is projected to become the third leading cause of death in the U.S. by 2020 and worldwide by 2030. Long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT), which is administered ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Researchers are now able to perform computational physiology and pharmacology experiments on realistic model neurons with accurate geometries and full complements of membrane biophysics and biochemistry; however, the practical utility of such simulations are restricted because of the limitations of current commodity computer hardware. We will provide real time, ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Mood disorders, including major depressive disorder, dysthymia, and bipolar disorder, affect nearly 21 million Americans or 9.5% of the U.S. population age 18 years of age and older. Among mental health problems, majordepressive disorder is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. for people ages 15-44, affecting nearly 15 million adults each year. While res ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Gastrointestinal (GI) malignancies are the most common cause of cancer in the world. Of the 10.8 million people in the world each year who develop cancer, approximately 3.3 million have GI malignancies. Until recently,the only sections of the GI tract that could be imaged were the esophagus, stomach and colon through traditional endoscopy. Initial segments of t ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In this Phase I SBIR project, Parabon NanoLabs, Inc. (PNL) will produce a novel, nano- pharmaceutical compound that preferentially selects and destroys brain tumor stem cells (BTSCs) to aid the treatment of glioblastomamultiforme (GBM), one of the most lethal brain cancers. BTSCs in GBM have been identified as a highly tumorigenic cell subpopulation that promot ...