Award Data

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most lethal form of adult brain cancers with a median survival of andlt;15 months despite aggressive standard chemoradiation. GBM are formed by GBM stem-like cells (GSCs) - a major contributor to tumor recurrence and a natural focus for therapeutic development. There are two main reasons responsible for treatment failure: 1) high intra- and inter-tumor cellular and molecu ...

This proposal is for a phase I/II fast track project for the STTR program with the main goal to develop a test for high sensitive detection of tau oligomers in biological fluids, which could be used for the biochemical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related tauopathies. AD is the most common dementia in the elderly population and one of the leading causes of death in the developed wor ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Traumatic brain injury (TBI) represents a significant societal and economic impact. To date, there are no FDA- approved pharmacotherapies to prevent or reverse TBI. The standard of care in an emergency setting focuses first on stabilizing the patient and secondly on management of cerebral hemodynamics. The patient may undergo surgery to remove hematomas, repair skull fractures, and ...

PROJECT SUMMARY The β-hemoglobinopathies are prevalent genetic blood diseases with few treatment options. It is estimate that 7% of the worldandapos;s population carries an abnormal hemoglobin gene with 400,000 infants born annually with a severe life threatening hemoglobinopathy. Drug mediated induction of normal, but developmentally silenced, fetal hemoglobin (HbF) expression reduces anemia and ...

Optical photothermal IR (OPTIR) microscopy for chemical imaging of living cells at sub-micron resolution Project Summary/Abstract Photothermal Spectroscopy Corp (PSC) and Prof. Ji-Xin Cheng of Boston University in collaboration with Prof. Rohith Reddy (University of Houston) propose to develop, validate, and commercialize a novel technical called Optical Photothermal Infrared (OPTIR) spectroscopy. ...

Project SummaryUltrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are known to reflect emotional processing, brain neurochemistry and brain function - key observations in animal model studies. Collecting and processing USV data is time-intensive, manual, and costly. Most importantly, it limits researchers’ ability to employ fully effective, and nuanced experimental designs, and is a barrier to entry for other rese ...

Abstract E cigarettes (E-cigs) are increasingly popular worldwide, in particular, among youths. E-cigs may contribute to nicotine addiction and are unlikely to discourage conventional cigarette smoking. Mainstream and second-hand E-cig aerosols contain, in addition to nicotine, detectable levels of toxins including carcinogens and heavy metals such as formaldehyde, benzene, nitrosamines, cadmium a ...

Filoviruses, consisting of two major virus families including the ebolaviruses and marburgviruses (MARV and RAVV), cause periodic outbreaks of severe viral hemorrhagic fever with mortality rates as high as 90%. Since it is difficult to predict the species that would dominate future outbreaks, development of broadly protective therapeutics to prevent and manage future filovirus outbreaks is of high ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Asthma, characterized by airways obstruction with symptoms of wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness and consequently cough, remains a significant health problem. While advances in bronchodilator, corticosteroid and Th2-targeting therapy allow for well-controlled asthma in a large population of patients, subjects with severe, corticosteroid resistant asthma require frequent ...

7. Project Summary Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative disease in which myelin of the central nervous system (CNS) is destroyed by a self-reactive immune response. This demyelination is accompanied by the death of the myelinating cells themselves, the oligodendrocytes. Repeated bouts of demyelination leave the denuded CNS neurons vulnerable to degradation and is the major cause of neuro ...