Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): West Nile (WN) virus is a flavivirus that can cause fatal human encephalitis. Over the past four years, this virus has established itself across the United States. There are no approved vaccines or therapies to protect against WN virus. This project is designed to develop an effective anti-WN virus RNA interference therapy. Our hypothesis is that small interfer ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Through a Phase I STTR grant, we developed a blood-based enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay (ELISA) to fulfill an important unmet need in public health efforts against occupational asthma. The ELISA quantitates antibodies that specifically recognize and bind to the self-protein, albumin, which has been modified by chemical reactivity with isocyanate, the most co ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A major cause of morbidity and mortality in cardiovascular surgery is excessive bleeding post- operatively, which is commonly managed by pharmacologically modifying clot degradation (fibrinolysis), through inhibition of plasmin activity (PLact). However, the only FDA approved and most commonly used inhibitor of PLact in cardiovascular surgery, while effective i ...

Project Summary/Abstract Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. Poor survival rates are largely due to the late stage at which PDAC is diagnosed and a lack of effective targeted therapies. While the field of immunotherapy has significantly increased overall survival in some malignancies, they have not translated to PDAC. The long-term goal of this research ...

PROJECT SUMMARYAminoglycosides are one of the cheapest and well known antibiotics in clinical use for overyearsbut one of the major limitations in their use is their ototoxicityWe are developing fast and low cost methods to develop aminoglycosides with antiribosomal activities and reduced toxicityIn this projectwe will identify novel aminoglycoside antibacterialsthat show reduced ototoxicityComple ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term objective of this proposal is to establish a commercially viable program of illness self- management in people with unexplained chronic fatigue (UCF) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). A successful self-management product has the potential (1) to improve the generally poor outcomes for UCF and CFS patients, (2) to greatly expand the availability ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term goal of the collaboration between the USC and Southern Sun BioSystems is to create a plant breeding and remediation technology-development center which would supply hardware, protocols for breeding-selection and mass production of elite plants for nurseries and remediation businesses, with licensing and tracking mechanisms for protecting intellect ...

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Nucleic acids are avenues for drug design both as therapeutics and as targets Here we propose to establish new methods for identifying antibiotic ribosome targets and lead compounds Targeting specific RNA such as rRNA which are involved in proliferation and survival of bacteria is a promising approach We are developing fast and low cost methods to screen s ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant):Reliable operation of a portable defibrillator depends critically on the "condition" of its battery. This condition is determined by available energy and at what power level this energy can be delivered to a load. With the initiative towards widespread deployment of portable defibrillators, a low-cost device capable of accurately measuring both state-of-charge ( ...

Project Summary Sialoglycans are sialic acid-containing oligosaccharides that play important biological roles in human biology and pathology and are indispensable molecular probes for research related to bacterial and viral infection, cancer metastasis, immune regulation, etc. The multifaceted functions of sialoglycans in human milk are also being explored. Nevertheless, sialoglycan-related resear ...