Award Data

ABSTRACT Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and death, representing 1 in 3 deaths in the United States, and 18.6 million deaths globally annually. Contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) play a key role in managing heart disease by enabling non-invasive assessment of myocardial perfusion, infarction, and viability. Cardiac imaging is th ...

ABSTRACT Between half and three-quarters of nursing home (NH) residents fall each year. About 5% of adults 65 and older live in nursing homes, but nursing home residents account for 20% of deaths from falls in this age group. 50% of nursing home residents have moderate or severe cognitive impairment. Older adults with Alzheimer’s Disease or ADRD are more likely to fall than their peers without c ...

Project Summary/Abstract Immunocytokines (ICs) are fusion proteins of an engineered cytokine conjugated to an antibody. These novel molecules are the next generation of cytokine-based immunotherapies with potential applications in a diverse range of diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriasis, and cancer. ICs are designed to selectively target diseased tissue or specific immune cells wit ...

Project Summary The value of computational chemistry to commercial drug discovery is now well-established. Virtual screening (including molecular docking) now jumpstarts most discovery efforts. More recently, a combination of GPU and cloud based computing has vastly increased the realistic computational throughput available for drug discovery. In turn, this has ignited substantial interest in rela ...

Abstract Foot ulceration is the most common and costly late complication of diabetes, with morbidity and mortality being worse than many cancers. It is estimated that up to one-third of people with diabetes will develop a diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) in their lifetime. Non-healing DFUs are a leading cause of hospitalization, amputation, disability, and death among people with diabetes. In the United ...

Acute pancreatitis results in over 275,000 U.S. hospital admissions and more than $2.5 billion in healthcare cost annually. Pancreatic necrosis occurs in about 20% of patients who have severe acute pancreatitis. One in three of these patients will develop infected pancreatic necrosis, which is associated with mortality rates of 11 -39%. Treatment of infected acute necrotizing pancreatitis is cruci ...

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) affects an estimated 20-30% of adults in the western world. Most NAFLD is benign, but up to 30% of NAFLD patients will develop a progressive form of fatty liver termed nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). NASH is the leading cause of severe liver disease, leading to rt$175 billion in healthcare costs over the next two decades in the US, and NASH prevalence ...

PROJECT SUMMARY In this Fast Track SBIR application, NeuroDex, Inc. proposes to use its expertise in extracellular vesicle (EV) immunoaffinity isolation to develop a blood test that detects synucleinopathies with high sensitivity, with the long- term goal of helping clinicians identify patients for whom antipsychotic drugs are harmful and contraindicated. Development and commercialization of a sen ...

PROJECT SUMMARY Few therapeutics are available for individuals trying to recover from opioid use disorder. Buprenorphine and methadone, opioid receptor agonists, are approved by the FDA to treat Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) but long- term efficacy and treatment adherence are sub-optimal. Extended-release naltrexone (Vivitrol®, Alkermes), a full µ-opioid receptor antagonist, was approved by the FDA ...

Project Summary/Abstract Unexpected adverse drug responses (ADRs) including drug-induced liver injury (DILI) are the 4th leading cause of death in the U.S. In addition, DILI in individuals is one of the major reasons for drug withdrawal from the market and is difficult to predict using conventional in vitro hepatotoxicity tests and preclinical animal models. Due to the critical link between DILI a ...