A total of 58 applications were received, of those 17 were awarded a combined total of $642,586. Funding was provided by the BU CTSI and funding partners including the School of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, and Boston Medical Center. We congratulate all of these outstanding researchers for their efforts in developing novel solutions focused on clinical and translational research.
Culturally-Adapted Motivational Interviewing and Contingency Management for Reducing Illicit Stimulant Use in Black and Latinx People

This CTSI pilot study is preliminary work in attempting to combine three approaches to treating stimulant use disorder in Black and Latinx people: 1) culturally adapted motivational interviewing; 2) recovery coaching; and 3) contingency management.
Patient Perspectives on Disrespect and Abuse in Maternity Care

This study will use mixed methods to assess the prevalence and experiences of disrespect and abuse among women delivering at Boston Medical Center (BMC). Our findings will serve as pilot data for a planned March of Dimes grant.
Identifying Coding and Non-Coding Genomic Alterations Associated with Aggressive Prostate Cancer in African American Men

The overall goal of this pilot project is to identify coding and non-coding genomic alterations in the racially and socioeconomically diverse patient population surgically treated for prostate cancer at Boston Medical Cancer.
Highly Multiplexed Immunophenotyping of Aggressive Histologic Patterns of Early-Stage Lung Adenocarcinomas

The proposed study leverages a unique set of early-stage LUAD tumors with extensive pathologic characterization that may start to unravel aggressive LUAD immune changes, which has implications for lung cancer diagnosis and interception. The results of this work may suggest new lung cancer interception strategies for early-stage invasive LUAD as well as improve current clinical management and outcomes. 
Non-Invasive Blood Flow to Predict Recovery from Coma
in Brain Injured Patients

We aim to determine the effect of cerebral blood flow on coma recovery, testing the hypothesis that non-invasive cerebral blood flow measurements following acute brain injury can predict recovery.
HIV-1 RNA Modification as a Driver of Innate Immune Activation

To test our hypothesis that HIV icRNAs are marked by unique base modifications, which confers immune-stimulatory capacity to HIV icRNA, we will use two complementary approaches to quantify RNA modifications in HIV icRNA: 2D thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and nanopore sequencing (Oxford Nanopore Technologies). We will determine the quantity and position of RNA modifications in HIV icRNAs. We hope that the successful completion of this proposal will serve as a basis for a future NIH R01 grant that will focus on the roles of HIV RNA modification in innate immune responses.
Validating the Role of Extracellular Matrix Molecules in Parkinson’s Disease Using Mass Spectrometry Glycomics and Proteomics

For any cohort-based study, the only way to eliminate all possible sources of bias related to tissue procurement and processing is to repeat the work using separate biospecimen cohorts in future studies. Thus, we will validate these findings using two new cohorts similar to our previous work, consisting of 12x12 PD and age-matched non-neurological disease controls, instead of one large validation cohort, because of various challenges associated with increasing sample size, including degrading quantitative quality, snowballing missing data and false‐positive discovery of altered proteins.
Soft Robotic Technologies Enabling Safe Laparoscopic Bowel Manipulation

This project’s endpoint will be the development of a soft atraumatic tissue manipulator for laparoscopic retraction of the bowel by exploiting soft robotic technologies. Safe and effective endoluminal tissue manipulation will be guaranteed by the design and constituent materials used for the construction of the manipulator, and through integrated pressure sensing elements that will monitor the interaction with tissues.
SARS-CoV-2 Diversity and Transmission Among Healthcare Personnel 

This study will combine viral whole-genome sequencing with rich epidemiological and contact tracing data on a unique cohort of healthcare workers and nosocomial patient cases spanning the initial COVID-19 surge in Boston.
Prediction of Knee Pain Using Ultrasound Imaging and Machine Learning

This project (in collaboration with Dr. Juan-Pablo Lopez-Zertuche Ortiz, Dr. Eugene Kissin, and Dr. David Felson) proposes to develop advanced machine learning approaches that can process ultrasound images to predict knee pain.
Modeling the Anemia Elicited by Chronic Kidney Disease in Zebrafish

The goal of this research is to uncover how the interplay between microRNAs and uremic solutes orchestrate the responsiveness to erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESA) in chronic kidney disease (CKD). To this end, this project will model the anemia of CKD using zebrafish embryos as a model system.
Epidemiology COVID-19 Response Corps
Our CTSI funded project will conduct an impact evaluation of the COVID Corps so that we can understand what worked well, what didn’t work as well, and what we can do better going forward during this pandemic and in future public health crises.
Multimodal Microscopic Characterization of Novel Humanized Mouse Models of COVID-19
This project will provide unprecedented insights into the cellular and molecular mechanisms that define SARS-CoV-2 immunopathogenesis and severe COVID-19 disease. Importantly, findings will be integrated with transcriptomics and proteomics datasets to elucidate specific biological pathways driving morphomolecular findings.
Generation of a Conditional Mouse Strain for GNB2 to Investigate Legionellosis
In the current CTSI pilot grant, Dr. Bosmann and his co-workers aim to generate a novel floxed mouse strain for tissue-specific gene deletion of the G-protein subunit, GNB2. The conditional knockout mice will later be used to study the role of GNB2 in myeloid cells during Legionella infection of the lung.
Liver-Dependent Lung Remodeling and Pneumonia Susceptibility During Sepsis
This study will leverage liver-specific mutant mouse models and single-cell sequencing to delineate cell-specific changes within the lung that rely on intact liver function, pursuing the hypothesis that during sepsis, liver activity dictates the transcriptional fingerprint of lung cells, including alveolar macrophages, to limit pneumonia susceptibility.
Role of ZEB2 in Pericytes Development and Renal Fibrosis
The goal of this pilot grant is to elucidate the role of ZEB2 in kidney fibrosis. ZEB2 is a SMAD-interacting transcriptional factor and is expressed in Foxd1+ stromal cells that are progenitors for pericytes and fibroblasts during kidney development. Pericytes and fibroblasts are the key cell types contributing to the myofibroblasts during kidney fibrosis.
A Patient-Specific Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC)-Based Organoid Model of Pulmonary Fibrosis 
The goal of this proposal is to provide a patient-specific in vitro model system, based on induced pluripotent stem cell-derived AT2 cells that we have engineered in vitro from patients with pulmonary fibrosis associated with the most common disease-associated SFTPC variant (SFTPCI73T), in order to uncover the mechanisms leading to human AT2 cell dysfunction, at the moment of disease inception.
For information about our awardees and their Integrated Pilot Grant Award Projects