(Huntsville, Ala. | March 11, 2020) – CFD Research Corporation announced today the award of a contract from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) totaling $2.5M to explore mechanisms, countermeasures and therapeutic interventions for chemical warfare agent exposure.
Chemical warfare agents (CWAs), produced by man, have the potential to cause catastrophic medical disasters and the ability to overwhelm any healthcare system. Extremely toxic, inexpensive and relatively easy to produce, these agents induce common cellular, molecular and inflammatory pathways resulting in acute inflammation, toxicity, and ultimately organ failure.
“Military conflicts and terrorism often place our warfighters and first responders at risk for exposure to chemical warfare agents, which are difficult to treat due to their rapid onset of action that can have disabling or fatal effects,” Dr. Narender Singh, CFD Research scientist and principal investigator on this project said.
CFD Research plans to use an integrated in vitro, in silico and -omics platform to execute their two-fold goal of identifying interventions nodes among the common inflammatory pathways while furthering identification of FDA approved drugs against these nodes.
Known drug databases will be mined as potential therapeutic targets and selected drugs will be identified for potential broad-spectrum therapeutic interventions and to further validate the inhibitory potential of common inflammatory pathways that span CWA’s and tissue types.
“The proposed study addresses a prominent gap in understanding this web of interconnected global and regional processes involved in CWA associated inflammation and toxicity. Our ultimate goal is to identify the common elements, molecular signals and cellular pathways, of these essential and analogous processes that will be exploited to identify common pharmacological targets for a single-drug multi-threat medical countermeasure (MCM) to mitigate CWA exposure effects,” Dr. Kapil Pant, CFD Research executive vice president for Biomedical and Data Sciences, said.
About CFD Research: Since its inception in 1987, CFD Research has worked with government agencies, businesses and academia to provide innovative solutions within the Aerospace & Defense, Biomedical & Life Sciences, and Energy & Materials industries. Over the years CFD Research has earned multiple national awards for successful application and commercialization of innovative technology prototypes, multi-physics simulation software, multi-disciplinary analyses, and expert support services. CFD Research’s impressive >70% three-year growth rate was high enough to recognize the company in the Inc. Magazine’s 5000 for the first time this year. CFD Research is an ISO9001 and AS9100 registered company and is appraised at CMMI Level II for services. Learn more at www.cfd-research.com.
The project of effort depicted was or is sponsored by the Department of the Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The content of the information does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the federal government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.
