Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Several disorders in reproductive medicine are results of changes in smooth muscle contractile activity. Increased myometrial contraction can lead to preterm labor, which affects 12% of the US population. However, the mechanisms involved in the transition from uterine quiescence to contractility at the onset of labor are not well-known. As a result, the managem ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Protein-RNA interactions make a profound contribution to the regulatory logic of post- transcriptional control of gene expression. Tools to decipher this intricate layer of molecular interactions on a global scale are coming to the forefront of molecular biology and genomics. The most wide spread methodology to examine interactions of RNA binding proteins (RBPs ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The objective of this STTR Phase I proposal is to develop novel multi-layer microparticles and demonstrate their feasibility to isolate and expand stem cells for medical research and therapeutic applications. In recentyears, stem cells have been used in a wide variety of applications, including cell- based therapies, drug screening, and models to understand the ...

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Intracerebral hemorrhage ICH is a major public health problem with highest mortality rate of all stroke subtypes and long term disability Since there are no available FDA approved therapies for ICH it is of enormous importance to establish effective treatment for this medical condition Following ICH the deposited blood is damaging initially via compression ...

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Ovarian cancer is the fifth most leading cause of cancer related deaths in women in the US It has been observed that the cancer relapses within relatively short periods of time even after the surgery and chemotherapy Therefore immunotherapeutic strategies may serve as an alternative to control the recurrence or progression of ovarian cancer Oral vaccines ar ...

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Ebola and Marburg viruses belong to the family Filoviridae and can cause fatal hemorrhagic fevers characterized by widespread tissue destruction with an incubation period of days Because of the safety concerns these viruses are designated as the biosafety level agents Currently there is no effective vaccine or therapeutic treatment against filoviral i ...

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Lassa fever virus LASV and Machupo virus MACV are hemorrhagic fever arenaviruses which are classified as Category A Agents Currently there are no licensed LASV or MACV vaccines and LASV MACV therapy is limited to use of the nucleoside analog ribavirin which is only partially effective and associated with significant side effects The impact of arenavirus ...

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant One of the challenges of research in infectious diseases is to find ways to use the increasing knowledge of the mechanisms underlying disease transformation and progression to develop novel therapeutic strategies for diseases such as increasing menace of bacterial infections Targeting specific RNA such as rRNA which are involved in proliferation and survival ...

Project Summary Occidiofungin is a cyclic nonribosomally synthesized antifungal peptide with submicromolar fungicidal activity against a broad spectrum of fungi Occidiofungin is produced by the Gram negative bacterium Burkholderia contaminans From our structural characterization studies occidiofungin was determined to have a unique chemical composition Our studies have also revealed that occi ...

ABSTRACT Recent studies of the applicants support the role of the endogenous gaseous biological mediator hydrogen sulfide H S in colorectal cancer In specific the selective upregulation of cystathionine synthase CBS and the subsequent production of H S in colonic cancer cells serves as a pro survival factor by stimulating tumor cell bioenergetics ...