PRASAD AND TEAM’S LAB AWARDED $68K NIAAA GRANT

Dr. Shalini Prasad of UT Dallas and Dr. Sriram Muthukumar of EnLiSense LLC have been awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism totaling $242,389, $68, 663 of which was awarded to UT Dallas. The yearlong project is titled “AWARE: A Wearable Awareness with Real time Exposure Rapid Wearable Alcohol Diagnostics”. Dr. Rujuta Munje, who earned her PhD from UT Dallas under the supervision of Prasad, assisted them in data collection. Alcohol (ethanol) abuse affects over 18.5 million adults in the U.S., costing society more than $200 billion annually in lost productivity, health care expenditures, motor vehicle accidents, crime and other related costs. Alcohol related diseases contribute to a high percentage of all hospital admissions (>20%) and deaths ~100,000 annually. Due to the host of medical, social, economic, and personal afflictions associated with habitual drinking, it is essential that effective treatment strategies be developed for relapse prevention and recovery from alcohol-dependence and alcohol-induced diseases. The goal of this SBIR Phase I collaboration between EnLiSense LLC and UT Dallas is the development of a wearable multiplexed alcohol biosensor platform AWARE for personal and lifestyle monitoring of alcohol consumption.