New Investigator Program
Improving Antibiotic Stewardship for Long Term Care Facility Residents Treated in the Emergency Department
Year Awarded:
2015
The inappropriate use of antibiotics in healthcare settings is a significant patient safety and public health threat. Older adults, particularly those living in long-term care facilities, often receive inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions in the emergency department and are at high risk for related complications.
The primary issue leading to inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for older adults identified by this project was urine testing patterns that resulted in overdiagnosis of urinary tract infections. To address this, the researchers developed and implemented a new way for emergency care providers to order urine testing in the electronic health record which was associated with a significant decrease in unnecessary antibiotic use in older adults being evaluated for urinary tract infections.
PERC Opportunity Grant
Improving Access to High Quality Surgical Care in Wisconsin Communities
Year Awarded:
2018
This project sought to develop the Surgical Collaborative of Wisconsin (SCW), a cost-efficient statewide collaborative to improve the quality of surgical care. The interest and engagement of surgeons and hospitals has surpassed the initial goal of involving 24 hospitals in the initiatives. SCW engaged 85 hospitals, where nearly 75 percent of breast and colorectal procedures are performed. There has been a significant reduction in reoperations in SCW participating vs non-participating hospitals. This project was also successful in establishing new partnerships, new initiatives, and supporting quality improvement in surgical care.
New Investigator Program
Autologous Regeneration in Burn Injured Patients
Year Awarded:
2017
Each year, around 11 million people worldwide sustain burn injuries severe enough to require medical attention. One year in Wisconsin contributes 61 fatalities and over 600 hospitalizations related to burn injuries to the worldwide total. Burn survivors can experience lifelong pain, scarring, and infection from burns as well as from the surgery needed to heal the wounds. As such, there is a significant need to develop new treatment strategies. This work aims to understand how healing can be accomplished without grafting healthy skin from the patient’s body.
The research team met the overall goals of this project, which included developing and characterizing an ex vivo (outside of an organism) human burn injury model, including instrumentation to generate consistent and reliable thermal injury identification of the natural variation in human skin, and the ability of the tissue to recover in culture.
New Investigator Program
The Role of Nesprin 3 in Mammalian Neural Stem Cell Aging
Year Awarded:
2017
As people get older, stems cells in their brains age with them, which can contribute to age-related diseases. However, the mechanisms underlying stem cell aging aren’t yet completely understood. This work seeks to better understand the processes by which neural stem cells decline, with the goal of improving health for senior citizens.
The researchers found that although the role of nesprin-3 remains elusive; this study produced more knowledge that had not previously been shown in the research. The lab’s use of data and extensive controls revealed that the available tools for this research are not sufficient for this investigation and not functioning as were reported. This knowledge will inform future work.
New Investigator Program
Mechano-electrical Feedback in Pathophysiology of Atrial Fibrillation: Novel Strategy for Antiarrhythmic Therapy
Year Awarded:
2017
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is an abnormal heart rhythm that can increase a person’s risk for heart failure and stroke. While strategies for preventing these complications exist, less work has been done on a cure. This project sought to understand the mechanisms behind AF, with the goal of informing new therapies and improving patient outcomes.
The researchers gained crucial knowledge and understanding about the mechanisms contributing to AF by successfully completing all proposed experiments. These experiments included engineering a human cardiac tissue model, identifying novel potential targets for pharmacological treatment against AF, and understanding what plays a role in the protection of the heart against pathological changes in the settings of chronically elevated blood pressure. This project was successful in increasing knowledge, fostering collaborations, publications, and developing new funding opportunities.
Strategic Research
Measuring and Addressing Disparities in the Quality of Care among Wisconsin Health Systems
Year Awarded:
2017
Wisconsin performs below the U.S. average on most metrics of disparities in quality of care. Because of this, quality of care is often lower for minority, low income and uninsured populations. These disparities contribute to poor health outcomes for disadvantaged patients and need to be publicly reported and addressed via sustained, collaborative action.Conclusion: The project has already produced one major study, the WCHQ Health Disparities Report, which was released in the fall of 2019. The study identifies where gaps in health outcomes and care exist in Wisconsin and incorporates data categorized by race and ethnicity, insurance coverage and geography. Further work is ongoing.
Collaborative Health Sciences Program
Paradigm Shifting, High Throughput Assay for Serial Quantification of HIV Reservoirs
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) currently has treatment options available that suppress HIV infection and renders patients noncontagious. However, it remains incurable and a portion of people living with HIV have poor clinical outcomes, even when treatment is “working.”
Year Awarded:
2015
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) ─ a virus that attacks the cells that help the body fight infection ─ currently has treatment options available that suppress HIV infection and renders patients noncontagious. However, it remains incurable and a portion of people living with HIV have poor clinical outcomes, even when treatment is “working.”
The researchers developed two tests that worked well with controls but were unable to reliably determine the amount of HIV reservoir. The first assay was an RNA purification version of a previous TILDA assay, and the second was a more complicated assay that required the development of a cell line. However, they were able to show a link between features on patients’ T cells and poor health outcomes. This knowledge will inform future work and the researchers continue to explore ways to stimulate patient samples that will be more reproducible.
Collaborative Health Sciences Program
Quantitative Models to Define Cancer Cell Heterogeneity and Predict Patient Drug Responses
Year Awarded:
2016
Multiple myeloma is considered an incurable cancer that forms in plasma cells in bone marrow which has a significant impact in Wisconsin. One of the challenges associated with treating this and other cancers is knowing how individual patients are likely to respond to different drugs. The goal of this research was to develop a new, comprehensive approach for characterizing patient drug responses.
As a result of the project, a suite of new capabilities to quantify patient tumor cell therapy response was developed, allowing researchers to determine how cells respond to common therapies and seek more funding to test the predictive capabilities of this approach. In the future, patients could see more effective treatment as a result of this and derivative work.
New Investigator Program
Reprogramming B-cell Metabolism to Prevent and Rescue Type 2 Diabetes
Year Awarded:
2016
Diabetes affects almost 600,000 people in Wisconsin and costs state residents $6.15 billion per year, numbers which are expected to triple in the next 15 years. Type 2 diabetes (T2D) accounts for the majority of these cases and is linked to the failure of insulin secretion from pancreatic β-cells (beta cells) that keep blood sugar in check. These rapidly climbing number pose a significant burden on the healthcare system.
The researchers identified a new potential target for diabetes therapy, the metabolic enzyme pyruvate kinase (PK), which has been found to be sufficient in initiating and amplifying insulin secretion. Their work suggests that PK activation could be utilized to promote the healthy metabolic function of β-cells in order to prevent or reduce T2D.
COVID-19 Response Grant
A Negative Pressure Isolation Head Chamber to Protect Health Care Workers from Airborne Transmission of Aerosolized Viruses
Year Awarded:
2020
COVID-19 had infected more than 2 million people worldwide by April 2020, including more than 9,000 health care workers who had inadequate access to standard personal protective equipment. As a result, health care workers developed their own equipment and guidelines to protect themselves from infection though all of these devices lacked proof of effectiveness. The goal of this project was to test the effectiveness of the Badger Box, a novel portable negative pressure isolation box that can act as both a physical barrier and containment unit for aerosolized viruses. Preliminary results indicated the Badger Box’s capability to capture over 95 percent of particles.