CBI Announces 2004–2005 Grant Awards

Carilion Biomedical Institute Announces 2004 – 2005 CBI/UVA Biomedical Translational Research Grant Awards

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Sam English
540 581 0136
biomedicalinstitute.com

Roanoke, VA (August 25, 2004) The Carilion Biomedical Institute (CBI) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2004-2005 CBI / UVA Biomedical Translational Research grants. This program accelerates the transition of University of Virginia biomedical research into commercial products and businesses by providing funding along with CBI assistance. CBI partners with UVA faculty and researchers during the development and commercialization phases to provide guidance with technology, medical relevance, intellectual property, and commercialization issues. This year’s program has identified three UVA research projects that apply innovative technologies to address clearly defined medical and healthcare needs. These projects also demonstrate a match between a medical or healthcare need, a technology solution, and the research team's ability to develop the solution. The winning projects and researchers are:

Psycho-Physiological Procedure for Assessing Attentional Disorders

The research team includes Jennifer Kim Penberthy, Ph.D., assistant professor, and Boris Kovatchev, Ph.D., associate professor, department of psychiatric medicine; Daniel Cox, Ph.D., professor, department of behavioral medicine & psychiatry and director, behavioral medicine center; Stephen A. Burton, Ph.D., president, PhysioAdvantage (Midlothian, VA); and Raina Robeva, Ph.D., associate professor, department of mathematical sciences, Sweet Briar College.

Project Details: Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) is the most common psychiatric condition affecting children, with estimates of prevalence in childhood ranging from 5-10%. Diagnosing ADHD presents a challenge to traditional assessment paradigms due to the fact that no single assessment tool or medical test that definitively establishes its presence exists. Instead, there are multiple tests of varying design, each of which has its own administration, scoring system, and diagnostic criteria. Unfortunately, none of these individual assessments has proven to be 100% accurate in diagnosing ADHD. This research team has successfully developed a comprehensive matrix of psychological and physiological assessments for ADHD, an integrated assessment method, and a prototype of a psychological assessment tool. The team will combine a psychological assessment prototype with a proprietary, standardized, wireless, easy-to-use, EEG acquisition device to create and prospectively test their methodology on a commercial-grade comprehensive computerized ADHD-assessment system.

Dynamic Partial Weight Gait Support: UVA GaitTrain

The research team includes Casey Kerrigan, M.D., professor and chair, Patrick Riley, Ph.D., associate professor, and Ugo Della Croce, Ph.D., associate professor, department of physical medicine and rehabilitation; Paul Allaire, Ph.D., Mac Wade Chair, professor of engineering and Jun-Ho Lee, Ph.D., senior scientist, department of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Zongli Lin, Ph.D., associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Project Details: Millions of people in the United States have difficulty walking as a result of various neurologic injuries. Perhaps the most promising rehabilitation strategy for the recovery of walking (gait) is partial body weight support (PBWS) gait training. However, current gait training devices require the assistance of several therapists to manually move and restrain the lower limbs, making a PBWS training session too labor-intensive and costly for extensive use. This project will demonstrate the feasibility of a novel rehabilitation and training system for walking and running, UVa GaitTrain. By controlling body movement and support, GaitTrain provides mechanical and sensory inputs to produce a natural gait pattern that maximizes the use of a person’s residual and developing function, and requires minimal rehabilitation and training manpower. The system will be particularly applicable for people with neurological injury (stroke, brain injury, spinal cord injury, and cerebral palsy) and musculoskeletal injury (fracture, joint replacement, and tendon / ligamentous injury). GaitTrain will also be useful for maintaining and improving fitness in a safe, effective manner that minimizes undue forces that predisposes one to injury.

Hyperpolarized Xenon Encapsulated Fullerenes: Development of a New Class of MRI Diagnostic Contrast Agents

The research team includes James R. Brookeman Ph.D., professor of radiology and biomedical engineering, director, UVA center for in-vivo hyperpolarized gas MR imaging, Harry C. Dorn Ph.D., professor of chemistry and director for self-assembled nanoscale devices, Virginia Tech, and James Duchamp Ph.D., associate professor and chair, department of chemistry, Emory & Henry College.

In 2002, nearly 150 million magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examinations were performed world-wide and approximately 25-50% required the use of an MRI contrast agent. Most conventional MRI contrast agents are based on small molecule chelates of gadolinium (III). Unfortunately, these agents have limited sensitivity. Newer contrast agents that utilize hyperpolarized gases are more sensitive, but are limited by the gas inhalation route of delivery. In this research a new class of hyperpolarized MRI diagnostic agents will be proposed for direct vasculature injection applications