Seniors take many medications during their lifetime. As seniors age, some of these medications may become unnecessary or even harmful. The process of stopping a medication that has the potential to cause more harm than benefit is called deprescribing. Physicians are more in the habit of prescribing than deprescribing, even though patients like the idea of getting off some of their pills if they can. The goal of this project is to use technology to support physicians in the deprescribing process.

Despite the power of gene therapy, its successful application to medicine has been diminished due to: (i) high toxicities and potentially fatal adverse effects; (ii) poor transgene expression in target cells; and (iii) extensive vector degradation. While viral vectors greatly improve efficiency, they sometimes lead to cancers due to chromosomal integration and may suffer from a lack of desired tissue selectivity. In contrast, nonviral systems have proven safer, but less efficient.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) (the deadliest form of brain cancer) is associated with poor survival rates (approximately 12-15 months from the time of diagnosis). This is due to the fact that most cases of GBM are resistant to current standards of care. As a result, novel effective treatment options are highly desirable. It has recently been shown that the combination of cannabinoids (such as THC or CBD) with the standard of care chemotherapy agent, temozolomide, demonstrates promise in the treatment of animal models of GBM.

Triozan™ is a safe, biodegradable and biocompatible hydrophilic and highly quaternized biopolymer with advantageous physicochemical properties that enables an efficient encapsulation and protection of drug molecules against degradation while simultaneously maintaining therapeutic integrity. We propose to encapsulate three drug candidates into nanogels formed from Triozan to enhance their therapeutic application and overcome multiple barriers such as multi-drug resistance phenomenon present in bacteria and in cancer cells as well as biological barriers such as the hematoencephalic barrier

With rapid and cost-effective genome sequencing becoming the norm, many causal mutations for inherited genetic diseases are being rapidly determined. The discovery of new genes for inherited diseases is enabling rapid genetic and chemical genetic platforms to be used to discover drug targets and drugs/drug-like molecules as potential treatment options for patients with inherited diseases.

Yeast is arguably the most important industrial microorganism in the world, playing a critical role in the fermentation of food and beverage products, as well as cellular factory for production of biofuels, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. In order to produce such a range of products efficiently and economically, specialized yeast must be optimized for each task. Current tools for yeast optimization are lacking, especially in the sectors of food, beverage, and feed, where consumers demand non-GMO yeast products.