Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Type 1 diabetes often leads to short-term and long-term complications which impair quality of life. Though many research groups are developing versions of an artificial endocrine pancreas (AP) system, current systems require at least one hormone delivery insertion site and at least one glucose sensor site. This complexity limits commercial viability and potenti ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The merging of cell culture and microfluidic technology has resulted in improved in vitro models for toxicity studies, drug development, and biomedical research. The reason for which microfluidic approaches provide a more accurate in vitro model of in vivo effects is because devices can be designed with unique properties to closely mimic the in vivo environment ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (FAST) procedure is an ultrasound examination performed to identify intra-peritoneal hemorrhage or pericardial tamponade. FAST involves the detection of free fluid in ultrasound images from four specific abdominal areas. Unstable patients with positive FAST results are operated on, and stable patients with negat ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is increasing interest in the exposure science field in top-down approaches to studying human environmental exposures (the exposome), where toxicants of interest are profiled within the body through blood and/or other biological samples. Such studies would complement more traditional bottom-up approaches where the environment in which an individual lives ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The principal aim of this project is to obtain proof-of-concept for a new nanotechnology-based sensor material for rapid and sensitive fluorescence detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychloro biphenyls (PCBs). Simple, cheap and safe methods to detect and quantify these toxic substances, which rank high in the ATSDR Substance Priority Lis ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The ambient concentration of airborne pollutants such as CO and PM2.5 particulates in rural homes of developing countries such as Kenya has been observed to exceed World Health Organization (WHO) exposure limits up to 30X, and US Environmental Protection Agency limits by 100X. This indoor air pollution (IAP) has been linked to nearly 3% of the global burden of ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The exponential increase of diabetics and the elderly in the U.S. has at least tripled cataract surgeries in just two decades. As many as half of these surgeries will lead to posterior capsular opacification (PCO), which requires follow-up surgery using Nd:YAG laser capsulotomy. Without this additional surgery, patients can suffer permanent vision loss. In many ...

DESCRIPTION: Sirtuins and ADP ribosyltransferases (ARDTs) are two families of related enzymes that have important medically relevant functions. For example, SIRT3, a mitochondrial sirtuin, controls mitochondrial function, and thereby exerts a strong effect on metabolism, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. There is a major need to have simple assays to measure the activity of SIRT3, ...

DESCRIPTION: Therapeutic peptides are used to treat human diseases ranging from HIV to diabetes and have some of the best features of small molecule and recombinant protein drugs. Therapeutic peptides account for 13 billion of annual pharmaceutical salesand are part of a growing sector of the biopharmaceutical market. Unfortunately, therapeutic peptides typically suffer from poor stability and s ...

DESCRIPTION: This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to develop new targeted fluorogenic substrates capable of measuring enzyme activities in the Golgi apparatus and Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) of living cells and tissues. If successful, the proposed research will provide breakthroughs needed to advance the discovery of promising new therapies and modulating drugs for neurodege ...