Award Data

Physical activity (PA) is a modifiable risk factor for a number of preventable chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, strokes, obesity, and diabetes. These conditions constitute health disparities for African American men. Behavioral interventions have proven to be effective in promoting increases in physical activity. While behavior change programs have been shown to assist participa ...

Project Summary/AbstractMutant forms of KRAS are a key driver in human tumors but remain partially refractory to therapeutic intervention. After over three decades of research, only a single inhibitor (sotorasib) targeting a single mutation (KRASG12C) have reached market. The difficulty for developing small molecule KRAS inhibitors has heightened the importance of alternative methods targeting the ...

Project SummaryThe goal of this project is to further develop an existing smart stethoscope in order to be capable of monitoring pediatric patients at home who suffer from asthma as well as adults with COPD. Lung diseases impose a serious burden on healthcare systems, individuals and governments. The World Health Organization (WHO) found that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lower ...

ABSTRACT The emergence of antibacterial resistance to common frontline antibiotics, such as methicillin, vancomycin, cephalosporins, and carbapenem, have created a global public health challenge for millions of patients. It is therefore critical to discover and commercialize new antimicrobial agents that can successfully neutralize multidrug-resistant bacteria (MDRB) with minimal toxicity. The obj ...

SUMMARY Arboviruses present a constant threat to human and animal health worldwide. They are transmitted by hematophagous arthropods, primarily mosquitoes. One of them, Aedes aegypti, is the primary vector of several widely spread arboviruses such as Zika, dengue and West Nile viruses, and for most of them, human-licensed vaccines do not exist or are suboptimal. These pathogens are transmitted int ...

Abstract Segmented negative-sense, single-stranded RNA viruses (sNSVs), which include bunyaviruses, are causative agents of human diseases. Rift Valley Fever Virus (RVFV), a bunyavirus, causes hemorrhagic fever in humans with a case fatality rate of patients developing hemorrhagic fever reaching approximately 50% and has been classified by the NIAID as a Category A Priority Pathogen. RVFV is mosqu ...

Project Summary/Abstract Lyme disease (LD) is the most common vector-borne illness in the United States and represents a considerable diagnostic challenge. 1-3 The current benchmark for LD diagnosis is the standard two-tiered test (STTT), although the modified two-tier test (MTTT) is rapidly becoming an acceptable alternative. 6 These assays are highly specific but have poor sensitivity, especiall ...

PROJECT SUMMARY There is an urgent need for the development of new approaches to treat patients suffering from pulmonary injury from viral infections, as demonstrated by the severe impact of COVID-19, which is a global pandemic that, at the time of writing, is estimated have impacted approximately 50 million people in the United States, leading to morbidity, substantial hospital and intensive care ...

Project Summary/Abstract Members of the Candida genus of fungi form part of the normal human microbiota but are also opportunistic pathogens capable of causing serious mucosal and systemic infections. Candida cells grow and divide in suspension (planktonic) cultures, but they also form resilient and drug resistant biofilms – organized, tightly- packed communities of cells that attach to surfaces ...

DNATWO, Inc. was founded out of Caltech to develop small molecule drugs targeting a new cancer target, DNA2, to treat triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). We have spent decades unraveling the role of the DNA2 ATP-motor driven nuclease activity in relieving replication stress at the replication fork and carrying out repair at forks collapsed to double strand breaks (DSBs). Our scientific premise i ...