Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Nitric oxide (NO) gas was considered to be a highly toxic pollutant as recently as the 1980s. It is now recognized to be an important messenger molecule in mammalian physiology. Inhaled NO is currently used to treat approximately 25,000 patients per year in this country with pulmonary hypertension. It is safe, effective, but costly. Published studies in which t ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Current treatment regimens for Crohn's Disease (CD) are unsatisfactory, as evidenced by the high percentage of complications in the disease, frequently necessitating debilitating intestinal resection. CD is thought to result from both an excess of pathogenic Th1/Th17 cells and a deficiency of tolerance-inducing antigen (Ag) specific T regulatory CD4+ cells ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project's long-term goal is the development and clinical validation of a useful diagnostic blood test for the disease sarcoidosis. Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disorder characterized by granulomas, most commonlyin the lungs. Its cause is unknown. The diagnosis of sarcoidosis is currently one of exclusion; there is no reliable, affirmative, rule-in, ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) are the most poisonous biological substances known. The lethal intravenous dose of BoNT serotype A (BoNT/A) in humans is 1-5 ng/kg. If accidental exposure to BoNT occurs (e.g., from contaminated foodstuffs), loss of life or life-threatening paralysis can occur. Most importantly, the BoNTs have already been weaponized in a hig ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Though often considered to be a disease of the past, tuberculosis (TB) is still a leading killer of people worldwide. At the end of 2008, approximately 2 billion people one-third of the world's population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTb), the etiologic agent of TB. The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people worldwide die ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is a unique collaboration between a small, but full capability, Biotechnology Company and a premier academic institution and laboratory to develop a novel product for clinical trials in cancer patients. The project provides for additional employment and economic growth benefits through the development plan, and has the potential to have significan ...

Physical Sciences, Inc. (PSI) has demonstrated that electroactive polymer coatings (EAP) may be applied to the surface of the cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries to protect against catastrophic cell failure. These EAP coatings form an electrochemical"switch"that can prevent catastrophic failure in lithium-ion batteries by reversibly changing from a conductor to an insulator on overdischarg ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Our goal is to provide neurologists and other clinicians a method for the rapid, painless, non-invasive evaluation of children with neuromuscular disease. Pediatric neuromuscular disorders include muscular dystrophies, spinal muscular atrophy, and inflammatory myositis, and affect well over 100,000 children in the United States alone. Present-day clinical m ...