Basic Research

A Phase III, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel group, multi-center, efficacy and safety trial of AM-111 in the treatment of subjects suffering from idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss.

While great advances have been made into understanding the biomechanical environment within human joints, large gaps in our knowledge of the basic mechanics still exist. These gaps are a direct result of limitations in our ability to experimentally characterize detailed internal joint mechanics during in vivo human motion. This lack of fundamental knowledge underlies a multitude of basic and applied research areas in musculoskeletal biomechanics.

Scholarship & Fellowship

SwRI has tapped into mobile communications technology to turbocharge its custom Rhodium Drug Development System. Rhodium, SwRI’s proprietary docking simulation program for biostructure-based drug design, has improved its processing capabilities up to four times faster thanks to a new SwRI-designed and optimized “super computer” that uses the same technology found in mobile communications to enable faster streaming.

The current therapy for diabetes patients is suboptimal as many endure complications leading to blindness, kidney failure, amputations, heart failure and stroke. We propose to develop unique stem cells engineered from skin or blood cells of patients and coaxed into insulin producing cells, which will be then microencapsulated and grafted under the skin of a patient. This proposal will help support the initial testing in the baboon model of diabetes developed at Texas Biomed.

This project seeks to test if an autologous induced-pluripotent stem cell-based cell therapeutic strategy will obviate the need of immunosuppression after pancreatic transplantation and provide a well-defined quality controlled population of ?-cells.

Musculoskeletal injury is a significant problem in the U.S. Military and civilian populations. As such, there is a critical need to develop methods and systems to accurately assess the risk of injury during military operational activities, vehicular accidents, and other potentially injurious environments in order to develop countermeasures and systems to mitigate this risk. However, advances in developing injury countermeasures have been severely restricted by the limitations of available tools to determine the biomedical basis of human injury.

Disorders of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) are widespread, afflicting between 5 and 40 percent of the adult population. TMJ disorder (TMJD) encompasses several conditions including orofacial pain, restricted mandibular movement, clicking and popping sounds from the jaw joint, and locked jaws. About 10 to 15 percent of TMJD patients have osteoarthritis, characterized by a degenerative joint which results from erosion of articular cartilage and degeneration of subchondral cortical and trabecular bone. Symptoms can become chronic and difficult to manage, severely reducing quality of life.