Award Data

Pancreatic cancer is soon to be the second leading cause of cancer-related death with an overall median survival of 8 - 11 months. For 70% of patients, systemic chemotherapy is the only option and this mainly relieves the symptoms and/or slightly extends survival, rather than cures the patients. One of the hallmarks of PDAC is extensive fibrosis that comprises up to 80% of the tumor. Cancer-associ ...

Abstract The advance of biotechnology is dependent on approaches for rapidly iterating through genetically engineered enzymes and pathways. While computational and gene synthesis techniques have seen considerable innovation in the last few decades, screening variants for desired activities has lagged behind, with few notable advances. Indeed, microwell plates, a nearly 60-year-old technology, rema ...

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Neonatal encephalopathy can arise from fetal hypoxia-ischemia during labor, chronic uteroplacental inflammation, and large cerebral artery embolization primarily arising from dislodgement of a placental thrombus. Because of overlapping clinical presentation, differential diagnosis is often delayed until seizures develop and MRI can be safely performed, a time at which most ...

Project Summary Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide and is expected to affect more than 110 million people worldwide within the next two decades. It is a degenerative disease that has a large impact both in terms of patient quality of life and in costs to the healthcare system. A critical need in glaucoma clinical management and research is the ability to accurately i ...

PROJECT SUMMARYThe Brimrose Technology Corporation and partner, The Johns Hopkins University, propose using non-invasive ultrasound neuromodulation to identify hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) in newborns to reduce death and lifelong brain injury. HIE is the leading cause of neonatal death and impacts 2-6 of every 1,000 live births in the developed world. Our goal is to investigate and demons ...

The melanocortin peptide therapeutic setmelanotide, (ImcivreeTM), is highly effective in the treatment of the rare obesity syndromes, POMC and leptin receptor deficiency. However, the drug is ineffective for the most common syndromic obesity, melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) deficiency (MC4R haploinsufficiency), found at a prevalence greater than 1/1000 individuals. Further, the drug is ineffective ...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has become the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the world, with a 72% mortality rate in the US. The rise in incidence of HCC is due to a steady increase in the major risk factors of liver fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatitis B/C, with limited efficacy conferred by existing treatments at advanced stages of the disease. Systemic therapy with tyrosine kinas ...

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 Optic neuritis (ON) is an acute autoimmune disease caused by immune attack on the myelin that protects the optic nerve leading to vision loss. Steroid treatments accelerate recovery of visual acuity in some patients but have no effect on other visual functions such as contrast sensitivity that are important for activities of daily life. Even with steroid treatments, 13,000 ON patie ...

Abstract. Glioblastoma (GBM) is an aggressive and deadly brain cancer with a one year median survival due to the lack of effective targeted treatments. Our goal is to develop a small molecule inhibitor targeting RPN13 protein in the 19S proteasome complex as a new drug for GBM. RPN13 is a proteasome ubiquitin receptor that recognizes ubiquitin-conjugated proteins that are thus tagged for degradati ...