Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women. Roughly 190,000 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009, and 40,000 will die. The majority of breast cancers originate in the lobular or ductal cells of the milk-producing glands. In these structures, there are two main cell types: the inner luminal cells surrounded by basal myoe ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Obesity and Type 2 diabetes affect the lives of millions of people worldwide, add significantly to health-related expenditures, and are seemingly unmanageable health issues, since rates of occurrence are steadily increasing. In parallel with the increasing incidence of obesity and insulin resistance, is the occurrence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): With funding from NIMH, TeleSage has developed a state-of-the-art mental health outcomes tracking survey instrument for use with both public- and private-sector adults. This survey is currently in statewide use in Tennessee and Iowa. Unfortunately, no corresponding cutting-edge survey instrument exists for youth. TeleSage has used the Ohio Scales in two state-w ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT) provides a new mechanism for assessing patient-reported outcomes. Using CAT can: (a) increase measurement precision, leading to a decrease in the number of participants necessary to achieve statistically significant results, (b) decrease test burden on respondents, compared to administration of fixed length surveys, thereby incr ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The economic burden of diabetes on patients and their families is considerable. According to the most recent estimate in 2007, the yearly cost of diabetes was approximately 174 billion. Landmark studies have demonstrated that improved metabolic control of patients with diabetes reduces microvascular complications, and cardiovascular risk. Despite proven advanc ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Laser Biopsy Inc, (LBI) has a vision of improving the speed and quality of cancer diagnosis with reduced patient risk and reduced cost. LBI is developing a new medical imaging system that will enable pathologists to perform real-time diagnosis of biopsies taken during surgical procedures. Most cancer diagnoses are made by biopsying the suspicious lesions under ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a proposal to develop a keratin based resuscitation fluid that greatly improves outcomes for patients following treatment of hemorrhage. Inadequate fluid resuscitation technology has contributed to tens of thousands of lives lost and billions of dollars of increased healthcare costs. Studies in hemorrhagic shock show that survival is primarily determine ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Engineered tissues are revolutionizing disease therapy in many areas of medicine. It is estimated that the total market size for all types of tissue engineered therapies was 1.5 billion in 2008. But for many types of engineered tissues, including engineered cartilage, bladders, and blood vessels, clinical manufacturing production adheres closely to th ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Targeted delivery of therapeutics has been a long-term goal in clinical medicine. Of particular interest is to be able to selectively target a drug to specific cells or tissues which could benefit from the drug activity, and avoid delivery of the drug to other areas where exposure to the drug could result in overt toxicity or other undesirable side effects. Fun ...

The use of LDR brachytherapy after sub-lobar lung resection is the focus of a phase III NCI sponsored trial. Early clinical results from independent studies suggest that brachytherapy enables a singificant reduction in local recurrence rates versus surgery alone. Civatech Oncology and Allegheny General Hospital propose to design and fabricate a bio-absorbable, 2-dimensional sheet brachytherapy sou ...