Award Data

PROJECT SUMMARYThree of top five causes of death in humans globally are lung relatedchronic obstructive pulmonary diseaseCOPDlower respiratory infections and lung cancers collectively account for over eight million deaths annuallyCurrentlyin preclinical settingstatic cell cultures and animal models are the most widely used systems for mechanistic and translational studiesHowevercritical limitation ...

Falls are a significant source of early morbidity and mortality in the aging population, yet the neurological,sensory, and motor changes that lead to increased fall risk often escape early identification and intervention. Vital signs are commonly used in clinical settings to assess the cardiovascular system (blood pressure, heart rate), immune system (body temperature), and the respiratory system ...

7. Project Summary Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative disease in which myelin of the central nervous system (CNS) is destroyed by a self-reactive immune response. This demyelination is accompanied by the death of the myelinating cells themselves, the oligodendrocytes. Repeated bouts of demyelination leave the denuded CNS neurons vulnerable to degradation and is the major cause of neuro ...

AbstractIf there were a simple and accurate means totake the pulseof a toothi efunctionally similar to a pulse oximeter that could be clipped on a tooth rather than the tip of a fingerthe quality and cost of dental care would be significantly improvedThe ability to measure dental pulp blood flow provides the most direct means to determine the viability of a tooth and is a vital piece of informatio ...

Abstract Diabetic ulcers or pressure ulcers are common for patients with diabetesspinal cord injuriesetcWithout proper managementsuch wounds often lead to infections such as osteomyelitis or sepsisresulting in high mortality and morbidityIn addition to bacterial infectiondiabetic patients are also more susceptible to cutaneous fungal infectionsAdvanced wound dressings and advanced wound therapies ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive and invariably fatal degenerative dementia and the most common form of dementia that currently affects over 5 million Americans. The quality of life and economic costs are significant with estimated U.S. health care payments of over 200 billion in 2012, plus unpaid care by over 15 million Americans that is valued ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long term goal of this project is to develop and commercialize noninvasive equipment, called the sleep and respiratory track (SARTrak) system, for high throughput detection of sleep apnea in animals. The specific goal for the Phase I application is to design and evaluate a basic model of the SARTrak system with eight chambers (one chamber per animal), i.e. ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): An increasing variety of diseases are being shown to be due to immunological processes, including diabetes, and now Alzheimer's disease (AD). AD is the most prevalent age-associated disease and growing evidence suggeststhat aspects of the innate immune system play a major role its progression. Based on this evidence, we propose a new approach to the treatm ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The broad long-term of this project is to develop methods for evaluation of adherence to intravaginal microbicide therapy for the prevention of HIV transmission. Correct determination of adherence to preventative therapies in clinical trials is essential to accurate evaluation of efficacy. A better understanding of the true adherence to a preventative therapy w ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this project is to synthesize, based on genomic sequence information, a human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) strain with demonstrated ability to establish persistent infection in sero-positive individuals. The resulting synthetic product will form the basis for the development of attenuated HCMV vaccines. Innovative synthetic biology methods will overcome ...