NIH

This request is for funds to purchase a dual line Nikon multiphoton system equipped with a resonant and galvonometer driven scan head and 4 GaAsP detectors. This instrument will be housed within the Center for Biologic Imaging (CBI) at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The mandate of this core facility is to provide access to a full range of light and electron optical, image analysis, and morphometric methods to all research groups within the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Multiphoton microscopy is an essential service provided by the center.

The requested instrumentation in this proposal is a high resolution mass spectrometer coupled to an ultra high performance liquid chromatograph (UHPLC) system that will be used for untargeted metabolomics and lipidomics experiments. Specifically, we are requesting funds for a ThermoFisher Scientific Q Exactive Plus with Vanquish UHPLC. This instrument will be housed in the University of Pittsburgh Biomedical Mass Spectrometry Center (BioMS Center).

This application requests funding to support the travel expenses of early career epithelial biologists presenting their research at the Epithelial Transport Group (ETG) scientific sessions at Experimental Biology (EB) 2017. The ETG sessions occur within the annual American Physiological Society (APS) meeting, which will take place April 22-26, 2017 in Chicago, IL as part of EB2017. The meeting will be held at McCormick Place Convention Center, which offers an ADA-compliant infrastructure for individuals with disabilities and special needs.

This application is for a K08 Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award entitled “Degradation of Toll-Like Receptor 8 by RNF216 in response to plasma MicroRNA’s – A Novel Mechanism Regulating Inflammation in Acute Lung Injury”. I am a physician in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. I am applying for this award to acquire advanced training in cell biology, translational research methods, and bioinformatics to develop my career as a physician scientist focused on the study of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

Despite routine use of sedative-hypnotic and analgesic agents (anesthetics) to prevent or ease suffering during aversive conditions, the effects of these agents on behavior and the neural systems that form memories, respond to threat, and process pain are poorly understood. This project will determine the memory-modulating effects of propofol, dexmedetomidine, and fentanyl in the context of periodic pain stimulation. It is a randomized, placebo- controlled, single-blind, parallel arm fMRI study in healthy adults (under age 40).

For many years in the field of pain medicine it has been noted that many promising treatments emerging from animal studies fail to demonstrate efficacy in human trials. There are many reasons for these phenomena and one of the key steps to improve this situation and establish more effective nonopioid treatments for pain is more rigorous conduct of multisite pain clinical trials from an experienced multidisciplinary team of investigators. The University of Pittsburgh Hub and Spoke Clinical Trials Network is well-positioned to take on this role and integrate with EPPIC-NET.

Invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) is a unique histological subtype of breast cancer that has chronically been understudied. The long-term goal of the proposed research project is to credential non-canonical FADD signaling as a genetic driver of ILC. Based on its high expression/amplification in human ILC cell lines, tumors and metastatic samples and its association with poor survival, I hypothesize that FADD is a key mediator of ILC disease progression and a novel therapeutic target to improve patient outcomes.

This R35 proposal is designed to consolidate our current NIEHS funded projects into one program with the focus on understanding the role of xenobiotic receptors in regulating the metabolism of xenobiotics and endobiotics and the implications of this regulation in human health. The human population is at an increasing risk of developing chronic diseases, such as fibrosis, metabolic syndrome, alcoholic liver disease, and neurologic disorders. Environmental factors, including environmental chemicals, are among the major contributing factors in the pathogenesis of these chronic diseases.

We propose to establish the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) HIV Research Training Program in Mozambique (Pitt HRTP). The purpose of the program is to build research capacity at the Catholic University of Mozambique, located in the port city of Beira, for the conduct of HIV clinical trials. This program is an extension of the Pitt AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP), which was established in 1998 and has been building research capacity at UCM since 2009.

The RDoC Positive Valence Systems (PVS) encompass motivational processes underlying normal reward- guided behavior and its alterations in many mental disorders. Yet, the theoretical links between the PVS constructs of Reward Responsiveness, Learning, and Valuation remain under-specified. Hence, our goal is to unify them under a new model of computational reinforcement learning with momentum dynamics wherein momentum reflects whether recent outcomes have generally exceeded or fallen short of our expectations, signaling an improving or worsening reward rate.