Award Data

PROJECT SUMMARYAcne vulgaris is a skin inflammatory condition affecting 80% of young adults and can frequently induce permanent disfigurement even with appropriate treatment. Acne is caused by C. acnes in the setting of hormonal changes and sebum induction that accompany adolescence. The mainstay of therapeutics consist of eradicating C. acnes and reducing inflammation. However, treatment is prolo ...

PROJECT SUMMARY—When neck and back pain becomes intractable, spinal fusion is the gold-standard treatment. However, up to 12% of these fusions fail due to infection, resulting in substantial personal and financial costs. In most cases, these infections are associated with the hardware used to stabilize the fusion. Traditionally molded or machined polyether ether ketone (PEEK) cages are widely us ...

Project Summary Exercise-based interventions have been recently shown to have great potential for preserving and restoring cognitive function in older adults. In this context, Tai Chi has gained the interest of researchers and clinicians because it incorporates physical, cognitive, social, and meditative components within the same activity. Such multimodal exercise modality is expected to have a p ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Rotator cuff tears are highly problematic for large patient populations, and therefore remain a very challenging clinical problem. Roughly 20% to 50% of those 60 years of age have a known rotator cuff tear and the prevalence only increases with age. While surgical reconstruction of the rotator cuff seeks to improve shoulder function and stability, the degrees of successful surgical ...

AbstractEpigenome analysis can help dissect the transcriptional regulatory sequences that control spatiotemporal patterns of gene expression during anima development and disease pathogenesis, but a major challenge to epigenome analysis is the heterogeneity of primary tissues. Conventional epigenome assays that take bulk tissues as input only produce population average signals. To address this majo ...

Project Summary/AbstractRelaxin is a heterodimeric 53 amino acid peptide hormone that induces cardiovascular compliance and reproductive tissue remodeling during pregnancy and parturition. In addition to reproductive organs, the relaxin receptor, RXFP1, is also expressed in the liver, heart, lung, kidney, bone and skin. This broad tissue localization has led to the recognition that relaxin is a pl ...

PROJECT SUMMARY The number of people with diabetes worldwide is predicted to increase from 415 million in 2015 to 642 million in 2040. The health care costs of treating diabetes accounts for 12% of the global health expenditure of which Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) constitutes 10-15% of the disease burden (IDF World Atlas 2015). T1DM is an autoimmune disease triggered by genetic and/or environm ...

Project Summary Heart disease remains the leading cause of mortality in the world and, drug-induced cardiotoxicity is a major cause of drug failure and withdrawal from the clinic or the market, contributing to the poor overall success rate of drug development programs. In vitro models of cardiac contractility have the potential to generate predictive data earlier in the pipeline to reduce later-st ...

Abstract Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) is the bacterium most frequently isolated from the respiratory tract of ICU pa- tients in the US and is a major cause of pneumonia in intubated patients. Furthermore, infection with PA gener- ally has a poor prognosis, with an estimated 40-69% of PA ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) cases re- sulting in mortality, and more than 30% of survivors suffer recur ...

Project Summary/AbstractPhysical Sciences Inc. (PSI), in collaboration with Michigan State University (MSU) and the University of Michigan (U-M), proposes to develop a novel technology that will non-intrusively monitor driver cognitive decline and/or high-risk driving behavior that is especially suited for seniors (aged andgt;65). Contextual physiological biomarkers along with computer vision base ...