Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The great need for more efficient and effective oncologic drug development has driven the discovery and integration of biomarkers into all phases of clinical research. Further still, biomarkers are entering the clinical arena as early means of determining which patients are likely benefiting from a particular drug. One field of targeted therapy that has relied ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Biomarkers of clinical activity are critical for targeted anti-cancer therapy development and are becoming important for the care of individual patients. In a prototypical tyrosine kinase pathway, governed by the epider mal growth factor receptor (EGFR), functional activity of the pathway is assessed by the phosphorylation status of EGFR and downstream signalin ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Miniaturized DNA Sequencer for Identification of Microbial Pathogens Abstract. The goal of this project is develop a compact and inexpensive DNA sequencer based on the implementation of sequencing-by-synthesis chemistry on a droplet-based digital microfluidic cartridge. The proposed device would be capable of sequencing 10's to 100's of base pairs using an ine ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Newborn screening is currently performed by collecting dried bloodspots from infants and then sending them to a lab for analysis. Lysosomal storage diseases alone number greater than 40 and there is an increasing necessity to screen for a number of disease conditions for which therapies are becoming available. Tandem mass spectrometry is an excellent multiplex ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite aggressive public health campaigning and strict guidelines for diagnosis and treatment, the estimated incidence of severe hyperbilirubinemia (defined as serum bilirubin levels greater than 99th percentile) is 1:70. Severe hyperbilirubinemia can cause a spectrum of neurologic dysfunction of which kernicterus is the most concerning. Kernicterus manifests ...

The recent emergence of the Silicon Drift detector (SDD), for use in Energy Dispersive x-ray Spectroscopy (EDS), has made possible x-ray event streams with input count rates in the range of 1-10 Mcps. Modern digital pulse processors are therefore required to run at fast time constants to achieve reasonable throughput; however, this causes significant coincidence artifacts to appear in the spectrum ...

The recent emergence of the Silicon Drift detector (SDD), for use in energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry (EDS), has made possible x-ray event streams with count rates as high as 1-10 Mcps. A problem with existing digital signal processing, as applied to SDDs, is the significant presence of coincidence peaks above the x-ray background. These coincidence peaks occur with amplitudes comparable to lo ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Delays in FDA drug approval are measured in lost lives (estimated to be hundreds of thousands over the last few decades) and increased costs to U.S. citizens for drugs that are eventually approved. One factor contributing to the delay in drug approvals is the widespread use of time-consuming and error-prone manual methods to deliver medical images (i.e. CT, MR, ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Over 700,000 surgical hernia repairs are performed each year in the United States and despite recent advances, a significant rate of recurrence persists. The incorporation of biocompatable mesh to strengthen the abdomi nal fascia has largely replaced high-tension suturing techniques in hernia repair. Currently, the preferred biomaterials include durable synthe ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunts are used to treat pediatric and neonatal hydrocephalus in severe cases, representing approximately 1/3rd of affected infants. Due to the high susceptibility for infection and mechanica l breakdown, the failure rate of VP shunts is around 30-40%. A need therefore exists to improve infection prevention for this procedure, likely ...