Award Data

ABSTRACTChronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of hospitalization in the US. Exacerbations - a worsening or “flare up” of symptoms - cause most COPD hospitalizations. Since most exacerbations can be treated with changes of inhalers and/or oral medications, at-home detection of lung function deterioration may facilitate earlier intervention and help delay or pre ...

Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate) are toxic and persistent compounds resulting from the production and use of fluoropolymers such as Gortex® and Teflon ®. The structure of PFAS preclude environmental degradation and can lead to bioaccumulation in animals and humans. Reported adverse effects of these compounds in humans include: ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Chemical risk assessment is widely applied in industries and regulatory agencies as an important tool to evaluate chemical toxicity in support of chemical registration, safety evaluation, and exposure limitation development. One of the most notable improvements in dose-response assessment - a required quantitative step in risk assessment - is the development of benchmark dose (BMD) ...

There are currently no vaccines or therapeutics available for Marburg Virus Disease (MVD). Given the specter of weaponization and the terrible morbidity and high mortality rate of MVD, this represents a critical threat to the operational readiness of the Warfighter. While traditional vaccines have contributed greatly to public health, they have some limitations especially in the context of operati ...

Abstract The 90 kD heat shock proteins (Hsp90) are molecular chaperones that are responsible for the folding of select proteins, many of which are directly associated with cancer progression. Consequently, inhibition of the Hsp90 protein folding machinery results in a combinatorial attack on numerous oncogenic pathways. Seventeen small molecule inhibitors of Hsp90 have entered clinical trials for ...

Neurodon LLC proposes to conduct lead optimization and candidate-seeking activities on a novel series of neuroprotective small molecules that shows efficacy in a transgenic model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). AD is a leading cause of death in the United States, with some estimates ranking it as high as third behind cardiovascular disease and cancer. Despite the enormity of this national public he ...

ABSTRACT Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a highly debilitating disease that affects about 1% of the global population, which increases up to 10% in individuals aged more than 65 years. The life expectancy for these patients is less than 10 years after diagnosis, and no specific drugs are available for pharmacologic treatment. Despite the introduction PDE5, prostacyclin analogs, and endothelin antag ...

In resource limited settings, rapid and accurate diagnosis of infections is critical for managing potential exposures to highly virulent pathogens, whether occurring from an act of bioterrorism or a natural event. This is especially important for hard to detect intracellular bacterial and alphavirus infections, that overlap symptomatically and often treated empirically due to a lack of reliable an ...

PROJECT SUMMARY There is an urgent need for the development of approaches to prevent cardiotoxicity in cancer patients being treated with anthracyclines, an important class of drugs in the treatment of cancer (e.g. doxorubicin). Anthracycline treatment-related cardiotoxicity is a major clinical problem that severely impacts patient care and also limits dose and usage. More than a quarter of patien ...

Open-angle glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide, affecting nearly 70 million individuals. Nonsynonymous mutations in the myocilin gene lead to the most common hereditary form of open-angle glaucoma and account for 3-4% of all cases. Disease-causing mutations, localized to its olfactomedin domain (mOLF), destabilize the myocilin protein, leading to its misfolding and accumula ...