Major Achievements

Human Performance

Team established between The University of Texas at Austin, Baylor College of Medicine, United States Military Academy, Army Research Laboratory/HRED, and the Ironhorse Brigade (1BCT), 1CD (First Brigade Combat Team) of the First Cavalry Division.

Thrusts:

• Neurophysiological Markers of Vigilance for self assessment.
• Personalized Improved Iconographic display.
• Augmented Leadership Training.
• Training to Sustain Vigilance in High OpTempo Environment.
• Brain Imaging as Indicator for Vigilance Modification.
• Nutritional Amendments to Sustain Performance.

• Generated very high affinity antibodies to the anthrax toxin PA. These antibodies bind with 6 orders of magnitude higher affinity than antibodies currently available. These antibodies have now been shown to have therapeutic properties in the protection of rats exposed to the anthrax toxin PA and clinical trials are in progress with Elusys Inc, George Georgiou and Brent Iverson, UT-Austin.
• Designed aptamer based MEMS chip to detect the biotoxin ricin (transitioned to Microgen Corporation), James Chambers, UTSA.
• Thioaptamer proteomics chips to detect immune response to arena- and flavi-viruses with SELDI/MS detection in partnership with Ciphergen, Inc. (Freemont, CA) and AptaMed, Inc. (Galveston, TX) in funded NIAID biodefense contract, David Gorenstein, UTMB.
• Detected 108 copies/microliter of 70 base DNA from pathogens in 20 minutes; signal to noise ratio of 7; transitioning to Therasense Corporation, Adam Heller, UT-Austin.
• Characterized heme transport gene in pathogenicity island and developed a prototypic rapid screening platform to detect many pathogenicity islands in a mixture, Shelley Payne, UT-Austin and Kerry Oliver, Radix BioSolutions.