Project Grant R44HL123809

This $265,347 Project Grant awarded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (CFDA 93.837 Cardiovascular Diseases Research) supports the development and initial validation of a point-of-care device by Functional Fluidics Inc. to assess red blood cell sickling in patients with sickle cell disease. The goal is to create a simple, stand-alone, and potentially CLIA-waived diagnostic system that can be used to monitor patient condition and treatment response, especially for drugs affecting...

This Project Grant award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (CFDA 93.837 Cardiovascular Diseases Research program) provides $483,852 to The General Hospital Corporation, doing business as Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), to develop a high-throughput platform technology for measuring the kinetics and equilibrium concentration of sickle hemoglobin polymerization in single red blood cells. The platform will enable optimization of emerging sickle cell disease treatments, such as...

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) awarded a $172,176 Project Grant to Albert Einstein College of Medicine to conduct a pilot study titled "Reducing Morbidity in Sickle Cell Disease-PREVENT Acute Chest Syndrome System (PACSYSTEM) Pilot Study." This 5-year grant, awarded on June 1, 2024, aims to improve health outcomes for children and youth with sickle cell disease by using implementation science methods to address barriers and enablers faced by healthcare...

This $299,790 Project Grant award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) under the Cardiovascular Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.837) supports the development of novel allosteric modulators of the thrombin receptor, protease-activated receptor 1 (PAR1), called Parmodulins, for the treatment of sickle cell disease (SCD). The project aims to identify optimized Parmodulins with improved potency and oral activity, and confirm their efficacy in mouse models of SCD, including...

This federal Project Grant award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the Cardiovascular Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.837), provides $300,000 to Gigamune, Inc. to develop an in vivo gene therapy for sickle cell disease. The project aims to test a novel lentiviral vector technology for efficiently editing hematopoietic stem cells to knockout the BCL11A enhancer, a key genetic target for sickle cell treatment. Through in vitro assays, the Phase I effort will...

This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), under the Discovery and Applied Research for Technological Innovations to Improve Human Health program (CFDA 93.286), provides $487,350 to Trustees of Tufts College (Tufts University) to develop paper-based microsampling devices for collecting and stabilizing dried blood and plasma samples. The goal is to create patient-centric technologies that enable remote sample collection and...

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) awarded Emory University a 5-year, $1,361,442 Project Grant (CFDA 93.855 - Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research) to develop an economical, rapid molecular test for detecting hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV. The key objectives are: Adapt and automate RNA sample extraction and stabilization technology to enable HCV/HIV RNA extraction from capillary whole blood. This includes creating a sample-in, RNA-out device using...

This Project Grant award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), under the Cardiovascular Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.837), provides $288,043 to Glycodots LLC to develop a rapid diagnostic test (EPX-RDT) that can detect eosinophil peroxidase (EPX) from nasal swab samples. The goal is to create a non-invasive, point-of-care tool to diagnose and manage asthma by measuring EPX, an important biomarker associated with...

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) awarded a $608,126 Project Grant (CFDA 93.837 - Cardiovascular Diseases Research) to the Regents of the University of Minnesota to develop and validate single-cell biomarkers for predicting clinical outcomes in sickle cell disease (SCD). The project aims to (1) define the relationship between common SCD adverse clinical outcomes and single-cell biochemical and mechanical properties, (2) determine the relationship between treatment responses...

This Project Grant award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the Cardiovascular Diseases Research federal grant program (CFDA 93.837), aims to evaluate methods for improving the homing and engraftment efficiency of CD34+ cells from sickle cell disease (SCD) patients. The $128,100 award to the New York Blood Center, Inc. will support research to determine if co-infusing the CD34+ cells with their flow-through accessory cells, normally discarded after CD34+ cell...