Award Data

Abstract Segmented negative-sense, single-stranded RNA viruses (sNSVs), which include bunyaviruses, are causative agents of human diseases. Rift Valley Fever Virus (RVFV), a bunyavirus, causes hemorrhagic fever in humans with a case fatality rate of patients developing hemorrhagic fever reaching approximately 50% and has been classified by the NIAID as a Category A Priority Pathogen. RVFV is mosqu ...

ABSTRACT The emergence of antibacterial resistance to common frontline antibiotics, such as methicillin, vancomycin, cephalosporins, and carbapenem, have created a global public health challenge for millions of patients. It is therefore critical to discover and commercialize new antimicrobial agents that can successfully neutralize multidrug-resistant bacteria (MDRB) with minimal toxicity. The obj ...

PROJECT SUMMARY There is an urgent need for the development of new approaches to treat patients suffering from pulmonary injury from viral infections, as demonstrated by the severe impact of COVID-19, which is a global pandemic that, at the time of writing, is estimated have impacted approximately 50 million people in the United States, leading to morbidity, substantial hospital and intensive care ...

Project Summary/Abstract Members of the Candida genus of fungi form part of the normal human microbiota but are also opportunistic pathogens capable of causing serious mucosal and systemic infections. Candida cells grow and divide in suspension (planktonic) cultures, but they also form resilient and drug resistant biofilms – organized, tightly- packed communities of cells that attach to surfaces ...

This project will establish proof-of-concept for CCR5 immunotoxins as HIV reservoir-depletion agents for use in cure strategies. HIV cure and remission strategies require elimination or reduction of the HIV reservoir. Approaches to reservoir reduction pursued by other groups include gene editing, i.e., direct removal of integrated provirus; latency reversal and an accompanying “kill” strategy; ...

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 ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Therapy for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD), slow-progressing neurodegenerative diseases, remains elusive. Therapeutic approaches focusing on beta amyloid (Aβ) removal from the brain or on targeting genes for which strong associations between their polymorphism and AD/ADRD are established, have had a mixed record of success. We propose a novel strategy to rev ...

Project Summary There is a world-wide “twin epidemic” of obesity and Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), with an urgent need to find effective new drug treatments for inducing weight loss. Stable derivatives of the endogenous glucoregulatory hormone, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP1) are in clinical use for the treatment of T2D but are also of great interest as an emerging treatment of obesity. Another closel ...

Development of Zika viral pseudoinfectious virus as zika vaccine candidate(Phase 2) Abstract Zika virus epidemics and the association of ZIKV infection with Guillain–Barré syndrome, and congenital disabilities, including microcephaly, led the World Health Organization to declare ZIKV a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” in 2016. Since then, various ZIKV vaccine platforms hav ...

Project Summary/Abstract Low oxygen (hypoxic) environments are known to be important for maintaining the small number of adult stem cells in the human body, such as in bone marrow. These conditions are also believed to enable dormant cancer cells to survive and metastasize years or decades after the original tumor has been destroyed and the reason why bone marrow is one of the most common sites of ...