Award Data

Hypersecretion of mucus into the respiratory airways is a major contributing factor in several lung diseases, including chronic pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, cystic fibrosis, and bronchiectasis. Despite the obvious medical importance, there presently are no effective therapies to control excess mucus secretion in these diseases, and very few potential therapeutic targets. We discovered that a ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) catalyzes the first step in fatty acid biosynthesis and its product, malonyl-CoA, inhibits fatty acid oxidation. These functions make ACC a prime target for the development of therapeutics to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes. Knockout studies in mice, and animal studies with ACC inhibitors, have validated this approach. The most po ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Summary Advancements in device miniaturization, integrated circuits packaging, microfabrication technologies, and biocompatible materials have made possible the development of complex neural prostheses designed to restore lost functions such as movement, hearing or vision. Neurological diseases result in significant impairment for millions of individuals worldw ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Many contemporary medical and dental therapies include the replacement or repair of tissues using materials such as metal. Currently there are at least 150,000 hip replacements, 300,000 knee replacements, and 500,000 dental implant procedures performed in the US each year (Kurtz, Mowat et al. 2005). These numbers are expected to increase as the baby boom gen ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The human genome contains at least 30,000 unique open reading frames that may yield >100,000 polypeptide products. These products assemble into more than a million biologically relevant structures or proteins of interest per organism. Crystallization and X-ray diffraction of these proteins is routinely performed to determine their 3D structure which needs to be ...

DESCRIPTION (PROVIDED BY APPLICANT): Schizophrenia affects roughly 1% of the world's population, with more than two million Americans afflicted in any given year, and an estimated 30-50 million people worldwide. Treatment with available antipsychotic medications often effectively attenuates the positive symptoms of schizophrenia without improvement in the negative symptoms or cognitive deficits. F ...

The long-term goal of this research is to develop a drug that is safe and effective against drug-resistant human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Several challenges confront current anti-HIV chemotherapy. The frequency of drug-resistant and multidrug-resistant HIV-1 is increasing. Toxicities associated with current HIV medications often result in the discontinuation of these therapies. Phys ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Latrogenic blood loss or "bleeding into the laboratory" is an important reason for administration of small volume transfusions in very low birth weight premature 6infants. A direct correlation was found between the volume of blood drawn for diagnostics and subsequent volume transfused. In neonatal infants, there may not be enough collected blood sample to perfo ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Prescription dispensing errors at a pharmacy are a problem on a national level, at a rate of about 4 errors per day in a pharmacy filling 250 prescriptions daily. This translates to a gigantic amount of 51 million prescription errors per year with about 3 billion prescriptions being filled. There are as many as 7,000 deaths reported annually in the United State ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability in the US with an incidence rate of 1.5 million at cost of $56.3 billion annually. There is no treatment for TBI, and the lack of therapeutic intervention for a public health issue of this magnitude constitutes a healthcare crisis. We have developed COG133, a peptide that is neuroprotecti ...