OCAST board approves 13 Applied Research projects for $1.9 million over three years

Thursday, December 2, 2010

The Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) this week awarded $1.9 million to 13 research applicants who are required to match the funding dollar for dollar. The research and development projects will be completed within the next three years.

External peer reviewers evaluate the applied research applications and collectively place them in order of the project’s expected ability to achieve commercialization through sound scientific investigation.

“Our peer review process coupled with our match requirements make OCAST-funded applied research projects among the most respected in the nation,” said Michael Carolina, executive director of OCAST. “The value of our selection process also helps validate the investment worthiness of our research projects. That is the reason our $196 million investment over the last 23 years has yielded $3.9 billion of leveraged or outside money for Oklahoma research.”

OCAST applied research funds target accelerated and proof of concept technology that has significant potential for producing a commercially successful product, process or service with high potential to benefit the state’s economy.

Projects range from thermoelectric power generation to new research for diabetic retinopathy.

The applied research award winners include the following:

Electronics

Norman

• University of Oklahoma and Phononic Devices Inc. – Patrick McCann, investigator

Thermoelectric materials and devices: The objective of this project is to develop novel thermoelectric materials and devices for power generation and solid state cooling applications. This project will involve designing and growing thin film semiconductor materials followed by characterization to evaluate material performance. Thin film layer design will incorporate structures that are predicted to enhance the thermoelectric effect significantly. $90,000 for two years

Biotechnology

Oklahoma City

• Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and Crescendo Biosciences – Michael Centola, investigator

Assessment of CVD risk in patients with RA: There are approximately 2.1 million rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients in the U.S. and 50% are likely to develop severe cardiovascular disease (CVD). Rheumatoid arthritis is a common chronic debilitating inflammatory disease that affects 1-2% of the population and is associated with a reduced lifespan. Cardiovascular disease has been consistently identified as the leading cause of excessive deaths in RA. A promising avenue for early identification of CVD risk is the investigation of serum/plasma biomarkers. This project will screen patients for surrogate markers of CVD and correlating traditional and novel biomarkers. $300,000 for three years

Stillwater

• ICx Nomadics Inc. – Lena Flood, investigator

Biosensor system for food-safety testing: This microfluidics approach will enable stream merging from multiple injected sample streams while providing an isothermal environment at the sensing surface for high resolution of the analyte-binding event. In contrast to any other known approach, these capabilities make it possible to virtually eliminate the false positive results that are so costly in the food industry. The patented FastStep™ method will be applied to reduce the contact time between the antibody and the homogenate sample matrix, thereby preventing interferences that typically cause high false positives and poor coefficients of variations. $90,000 for two years

Norman

• University of Oklahoma and U.S. Department of Energy – Zhili He, investigator

HuMiChip to detect and characterize the human microbiome: Human microbiota play critical roles in human health but little is known about their identity, functional activity, interactions, dynamics and linkages with human health and disease. The goal of this study is to develop a microarray-based technology, called human microbiome chip (HuMiChip) to detect and characterize the human microbiome. Three objectives will be pursued: (1) To develop bioinformatics tools and databases for HuMiChip, (2) To design and construct a comprehensive HuMiChip and (3) To evaluate HuMiChip performance. It is expected that HuMiChip will specifically identify microbial species/strains and characterize their metabolic pathways related to human health and disease. HuMiChip will be used to analyze the human microbiome with a focus on five body sites. $293,017 for three years

Energy Resources/Petroleum

Sapulpa

• Cal-Tech Global LLC – Mike Callaway, investigator

Sulfabate – improved H2S filtering media: Approximately 40% of the world’s supply of natural gas is “sour” or contaminated with hydrogen sulfide (H2S) that must be removed prior to entering a pipeline. While most gas is cleaned using regenerative amine systems, in small gas fields and at remote locations, amine treatment is not economically viable. In these cases, a non-regenerative scavenging process is used. Cal-Tech Global Inc. has developed Sulfabate, a non-regenerative, granular filter media that is 300% better than competitive products. This will be accomplished by achieving the following objectives: (1) Characterize the current formulation so critical elements and properties can be identified, (2) Design and validate a new formulation, (3) Ensure the new formulation is scalable to manufacturing quantities while maintaining the efficacy of the current product and (4) Validate an approach for on-going quality control. $228,375 for two years

Advanced Materials/Chemicals

Stillwater

• Oklahoma State University and Oklahoma Department of Transportation – Yu Mao, investigator

Magnetically recyclable biocatalysts for biofuel production: The objective of the proposed project is to investigate cellulase immobilization on magnetic nanoparticles for enzyme reuse in cellulosic ethanol production. Magnetically immobilized cellulases with the retention of enzyme activity are highly desirable for the hydrolysis of cellulosic biomass to improve enzyme half-life and to reduce enzyme cost. This project proposed to synthesize water-dispersible magnetic nanoparticles that are modified by polymer ligands on the surface to provide conformational stability to the immobilized cellulases. The proposed enzyme recycling technology will enable the expensive enzyme ingredient to be reused and directly contribute to the cost reduction in cellulosic ethanol production. $90,000 for two years

Diagnostic and Therapeutic Biotechnology

Oklahoma City

• Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation – Yunzhou Dong, investigator

Drug development for prostate cancer: Prostate cancer (PCA) is the second leading cause of new cancer cases in men worldwide and the sixth leading cause of cancer death in men. Inhibition of tumor angiogenesis is one of the ways to block tumor growth by the regulation of either VEGF or Notch signaling pathway. However, these approaches have been insufficient or side-effective. The proposed project is to develop a drug (compound) against prostate cancer in mouse models. The research demonstrates that tumor angiogenesis has been significantly inhibited in Epsins knockout mice compared to wild type. This project will design transduction peptide(s) and inject the peptide(s) to the prostate cancerous mouse models to test the drug efficiency. $90,000 for two years

• University of Oklahoma Health Sciences – Muna Naash, investigator

Non-viral gene therapy for diabetic retinopathy: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of blindness in the industrialized world. There is no curative therapy for DR. As conventional treatments are limited, gene therapy is attractive for treatment of this disease. The principal investigator (PI) has developed novel, non-viral self-compacted DNA nanoparticles (NPs) for efficient transport of therapeutic genes to the eye. NPs are small (8-11 nanometers in diameter), safe, effective, non-toxic, have no limitations on the size of the payload and efficiently express within one hour of delivery to the eye. The system is clinically viable and, if properly adapted, provides a vehicle for delivery of DNA to treat and prevent different forms of retinal diseases. In this project, the PI will perform proof-of-principle experiments to evaluate efficacy and longevity of NPs designed to rescue the DR phenotype in the Ins2Akita mouse model of diabetes. $90,000 for two years

• University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center – Jay Hanas, investigator

Technology development for early detection of lung cancer: The high mortality rate of lung cancer (third of all cancers) is likely due to the lack of overt symptoms during the early, more curable stages of this disease. Little progress has been made in developing technologies for the early detection of lung cancer, especially for smokers. The goals of this project are to develop accurate and robust blood tests for the early detection of lung cancer that will be useful for screening tobacco smokers. Blood test for early detection of lung cancer would reduce the societal and clinical burdens of this disease. The PI proposes to develop this blood test using serum profiling, which is the analysis of biomolecules and their patterns in sera which correlate with particular disease processes. In this proposal, the PI will present results using electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) in which he distinguishes serum samples from early stage lung cancer patients from those of healthy individuals. $90,000 for two years

• DormaTarg Inc. – Michael Ihnat, investigator

Role of DT-320 in triple-negative breast cancer: DormaTarg Inc. has identified a novel screening system designed specifically to identify drugs that target dormant cancer cells responsible for a majority of cancer deaths. This unique platform allows DormaTarg to screen and develop a number of compounds into potential pharmaceutical cancer drugs. Three lead compounds were identified in a limited screen of a library of compounds and have been tested in models of breast and other cancers. This proposal seeks to further develop the lead compound, DT-320, in preparation for clinical trials. The goal of this accelerated proposal is to test a candidate compound for efficacy in triple negative breast cancer, a drug resistant subtype for which useful therapy is currently unavailable. The project also seeks to determine the cellular and molecular mechanism of tumor cell kill of DT-320. DormaTarg is initially targeting breast and pancreatic cancers, followed by bladder and prostate cancers, which total roughly one third of new cancer cases in the United States. $91,570 for two years

Other – Materials

Stillwater

• Xplosafe LLC – Allen Apblett, investigator

Colorimetric pellets for peroxide prevention: Many organic compounds form explosive peroxides upon exposure to air but the typical methods used to prevent peroxide formation provide no indication of the solvent’s safety and are potential contaminants. The company’s solution for materials in which peroxide formation leads to violent polymerizations is the use of nanoparticles of vanadium(IV) oxide supported on catalyst support pellets. The resulting Xpunge pellets will not contaminate the compounds and will actively reduce peroxides as they form. When the Xpunge pellets are spent, a color change from blue to yellow will indicate the solvent is unsafe and the pellets need to be replaced. The proposed research will identify the most appropriate support and vanadium oxide loading to give a product that meets the criteria of strong adhesion to the support, sufficiently fast reactions with peroxides and sufficient capacity for peroxide reduction. $73,600 for two years

Information Technology – Security and Biometrics

Tulsa

• True Digital Security – Jerald Dawkins, investigator

TokenEx – Compliance avoidance through tokenization: Credit card security is a growing problem for retail merchants and credit card companies. Security breaches and fraud cost the retail and credit card industry $100 billion a year. To contain this problem, the five major card brands recently banded together and created a new set of stringent credit card security requirements, called the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards. TokenEx provides a service that lets merchants take credit cards for payment without having to process, transmit or store the actual credit card numbers. By eliminating the need to deal with credit card numbers, TokenEx’s service takes most of a merchant’s computer systems out of the scope of PCI standards. TokenEx is responsible for giving the real card number to the merchant bank so the bank can authorize the transaction for the merchant and settle the proper accounts. $300,000 for two years

Separation Technology

Norman

• University of Oklahoma and MicroChem Solutions – Shaorong Liu, investigator

A miniaturized HPLC coupling with a mass spectrometer: Over the years, liquid chromatography has emerged as a workhorse technology in life sciences, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, research and development and industrial chemicals. Used alone or in combination with other high performance technologies, High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) is a versatile technique for efficient separation, quantification and characterization of constituents of complex chemical mixtures. Microchip HPLC can and will play an important role in point-of-care measurements. A major challenge toward microchip HPLC is the lack of a robust and miniature high-pressure pump that can be integrated with microchip devices. The goal of this project is to address this issue. In this project, the PI will optimize and characterize the HPLC system and develop a prototype instrument for alpha and beta tests. $90,000 for two years