Love, Tito’s

Diseases transmitted through tick bites are a growing public health concern, but current diagnostic tests often fail to recognize the presence of an infection early on in its course because the infection needs to grow significantly before our immune system begins to respond. However, we do develop antibodies earlier for the components in the saliva of disease-spreading ticks. Leveraging that knowledge, this project by Yale University seeks to identify key components of tick saliva that generate the broadest immune response so that a diagnostic test can be developed to recognize the potential for an emerging infection within a patient. If we can begin treating diseases such as Lyme much earlier, then the negative impacts of these serious but largely silent infections can be mitigated.

Tito’s committed $1,050,000 over 4 years.

Protein therapies are making breakthroughs in treating an ever-increasing number of diseases from infections to cancer to diabetes. However, protein therapies require painful injections and are then quickly eliminated from our bodies. These challenges necessitate multiple doses or the elaboration of long-lasting derivatives. This research by the University of Texas aims to overcome these obstacles by using bacteria to both manufacture and deliver protein treatments without the need for injections or multiple doses. Overcoming these problems and empowering oral delivery will expand the field of protein therapy to treat a wider range of conditions and more diverse populations.

Tito's committed $504,739 over 3 years.

Future progress in advanced materials for quantum and energy applications requires a detailed understanding of how the flow of electrical energy is affected by nanoscale structures. The construction of an ultrafast momentum microscope facility will enable scientists to explore new territory in quantum and energy science to help scientists and engineers design next-generation photovoltaic, energy storage, and quantum devices.

Tito’s committed $1,400,000 as a one-time gift.

Life-threatening fungal infections arise in the intestinal tract in patients with cancer, organ failure, autoimmunity, and severe viral infections. Standard treatment options can fail because of the emergence of novel fungal pathogens and increasing resistance to, and toxicity associated with, antifungal drugs. However, bacteria that live in our gut produce metabolites that naturally limit fungal growth. Tito’s is funding a new approach to infectious disease prevention wherein researchers are identifying bacterial-derived metabolites that can be used as therapeutics to limit fungal colonization and reduce the risk of invasive disease in at-risk patients.

Tito’s committed $400,000 over 2 years.

Uncertainty around the seasonal variability in the amount of fertilizer needed to maximize crop yields is a big problem for farmers in the US. Missing the optimum fertilization level can hurt a farmer’s bottom line and also have negative downstream environmental effects. Tito’s is funding field work to study how interactions between the environment, plant physiology, and crop management practices affect production outcomes. Iowa State University is using the data from these studies, along with the latest advances in supercomputing and quantitative modeling, to help farmers maximize yield while improving fertilizer use efficiency. Additional research is exploring the effects of excessive nitrogen fertilizer on corn yield in the Midwest.

Tito’s committed $651,179 over 2 years.

Plant matter is broken down in nature through various means, including within the digestive tracts of insects. The microbiomes within these insects have co-evolved to become incredibly efficient at processing food that insects eat, and that can be extended to man-made plastics. This research by the University of Texas seeks to reformat these capabilities for the degradation of plastics, focusing especially on the degradation of microplastics, which have proven to be an enormous environmental and public health problem.

Tito’s committed $1,000,210 over 3 years.

Point-of-care diagnostics that can quickly and inexpensively determine details of an infection are critical to help properly treat and combat the spread of disease. CRISPR-Cas enzyme complexes are a relatively new tool in medicine, and new classes of these enzymes are being developed at the University of Texas that enable them to act as sensitive detectors of viral, bacterial or fungal genomic material. If successful, this new type of diagnostic assay can help clinicians quickly determine which course of treatment is optimal for patients.

Tito’s committed $1,013,927 over 3 years.

Halting a pathogenic infection is a job for the immune system, but numerous bacterial, fungal and viral infections can evade our immune system for long enough to cause severe illness or even death. In order for therapeutics to be developed to fight dangerous pathogens, we need to know where to attack them. Funding from Tito’s is being used to develop the world’s most extensive library of novel antibodies that can be screened for activity against troublesome or emerging pathogens. Once established, this resource can be used by scientists to figure out the most vulnerable locations on pathogens that are good candidates for attacking them.

Tito’s committed $1,500,000 over 3 years.

Water availability is the single most important limitation to crop production globally, and specific plant features are known to impact how efficiently they use water. Stomata are tiny pores on leaf surfaces that regulate the movement of CO₂ into the leaf and water vapor out. Tito’s is funding a project to develop a tool that plant biologists can use to rapidly evaluate the expected water use efficiency based on the stomata features to help improve breading practices and create crops that are more drought-tolerant.

Tito’s committed $999,381 over 3 years.

Spinal cord injuries often have an immediate and devastating impact on a person’s life. The healing process involves the formation of scar tissue, which prevents reconnection and recovery following the injury. With Tito’s support, a research group at Northwestern University that recently discovered a breakthrough in healing acute spinal cord injuries is working to extend their biomaterial technology to help reverse scarring and re-initiate nerve growth in patients suffering from long-term spinal injuries.

Tito’s committed $2,000,000 over 3 years.

Novel approaches are needed to treat deadly bacterial infections, as humanity’s most powerful antibiotics are rapidly becoming less effective. Bacteriophages are viruses that have evolved to specifically attack bacteria, and scientists are just beginning to unlock their potential as one of our next-generation antibiotics. Tito’s is funding research at Texas A&M University’s Center for Phage Technology to help broaden their therapeutic reach.

Tito’s committed $1,402,747 over 3 years.

Innovative solutions are critical to the future of sustainable supplies and quality of water. Tito’s is supporting research in the Texas Southern High Plains as a model system for developing solutions to help combat drought, heat stress, and declining water resources. Results from this work can be extended to agricultural regions worldwide, as challenges to maintaining sufficient water resources continue to grow and demand solutions.

Tito’s committed $1,200,000 over 3 years.

To understand how neurodegenerative diseases begin and progress, scientists create accurate representations of molecular features that are correlated with, or are the proximate cause of, these diseases. Tito’s is supporting researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology that are using state-of-the-art imagining techniques and mathematical tools to recreate protein aggregates in the lab as they exist in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The goal of their work is to help in the discovery of diagnostics to detect disease earlier or even treatments for these devastating diseases.

Tito’s committed $370,471 over 3 years.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, over half a million people a year need treatment for life-threatening snakebites. Current available products often lack effectiveness or are in short supply. Enter: The Global Snakebite Initiative, a group bringing world leaders together to design the best possible solution to fight the problem. With Tito’s support, the organization will develop and test new batches of antivenom treatment using cutting-edge technology, hoping to reach its goal to save thousands of lives every year.

Tito's committed $1,439,758 over 4 years.

Cancer cells use nutrients and carry out metabolism differently than healthy cells. Several successful approaches to fighting cancer involve targeting metabolic pathways specific to the type of cancer. The work carried out in this project by Rutgers University aims to understand the role that fasting might play in limiting nutrients that reach tumors as a way to slow disease progression and possibly enhance the effectiveness of other cancer therapies.

Tito’s committed $780,000 over 3 years.

Removing CO₂ from the atmosphere by capturing it and permanently storing it or converting it into useful products is a well-known idea. However, the energy required to carry out CO₂ sequestration is currently impractical, even if renewables are used as the energy source. Advances in materials science have created amazing materials that can have properties that were once considered in the realm of science fiction. One such approach to capturing carbon uses a complex material called a covalent-organic framework (COF), which can be designed to extract CO₂ directly from the atmosphere or at the tail end of an industrial process, where it's highly concentrated, by using a negligible amount of energy compared to current methods. Tito’s is funding a project that uses COFs containing biomimetic-inspired structures that could one day make low-cost, low-energy carbon sequestration a reality.

Tito’s committed $895,928 over 3 years.

Water shortages are expected to increase in duration, severity, and number throughout the world. Extracting water from the atmosphere, even within incredibly low-humidity environments such as deserts, provides the opportunity to significantly reduce the impacts of droughts. Tito’s is supporting work by the University of California - Berkeley investigating the use of novel materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with the hope that they can serve as an inexpensive, scalable, and long-lasting solution that only requires the energy from sunlight to function.

Tito’s committed $880,000 over 3 years.

Tito’s is helping fund important vaccine development research through The University of Texas. That funding will go towards both cryo-EM and cryo-ET maintenance and equipment which are both used to study viruses and find the most effective ways to create vaccines and antibody therapies.

Tito's committed $2,700,000 over 3 years.

What are lysins? They are newly developed biological tools used to prevent and treat bacterial infections, especially against bacteria that are resistant to common antibiotics. Unfortunately, there are certain lysins that cannot be used against certain dangerous bacteria found specifically in hospitals. With the help of Tito’s funding, Rockefeller University scientists can dive deeper into understanding why these lysins become inactive and ideally, engineer them so that they may be used to their fullest potential.

Tito's committed $450,000 over 3 years.

One of the most common chemical types used in nearly all cleaning supplies is surfactants, which aren’t biodegradable and don’t photodegrade indoors. Within schools and office buildings, surfactant residue builds up over time on surfaces such as carpets, and these are resuspended in the air as a type of dust particle when foot traffic picks up during the day. Scientists need to understand how much of these chemicals are being taken up by people as they breathe indoor air in these common spaces and whether or not it poses a long-term risk to the respiratory health of building occupants. Tito’s is providing support to study this potential problem and determine if more attention should be directed to help address it.

Tito’s committed $325,022 over 2 years.

This Love, Tito’s gift to the Texas A&M Foundation will support responsive agriculture teaching, research, service and professional development in the Texas A&M University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Responsive agriculture is a science-based, dynamic systems approach to agriculture that seeks to respond to the growing public health challenge of escalating chronic disease while considering environmental sustainability and economic viability. The professorship will advance the responsive agriculture research mission to understand relationships among animal and plant agricultural production and management, the environment, nutrient quality, nutrient content and human health.

Tito’s committed $500,000 as a one-time gift.

Exosomes are tiny, nanoscopic particles that are constantly being made and released by cells. Only recently have scientists started uncovering their incredible potential. Exosomes are excellent for delivering therapeutic elements throughout the body, so researchers have been developing techniques to produce those tiny particles, pinpointing their specific qualities to best prescribe and successfully treat patients. Exosomes are still being explored, but with partial funding from Love, Tito’s, the group at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center can hyper-focus on moving forward in its study, spotlighting: macular degeneration, immunotherapy, and fundamental science discovery.

Tito's committed $3,090,000 over 2 years.

Dr. Lauren Ancel Meyers and her team at the University of Texas are researching how COVID-19 is transmitted, contained, and controlled around the world while working with the CDC and White House to create a plan of action against the pandemic. By using next-generation research, and support from Tito’s, their goal is to not only learn the costs and impact the pandemic has had on the economy, but on each individual person. Additionally, her team will specifically address Tito's hometown of Austin and their home state of Texas to tackle COVID-19 challenges (with a goal to use those same tactics on other cities and states nationwide). The plan will support future pandemic preparedness and create long-term solutions for any future threats.

Tito's committed $2,486,142 over 4 years.

With support from Tito’s through a special grant, Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine leveraged a decade of experience developing a SARS vaccine to initiate a research & development collaborative program and rapidly create COVID-19 vaccine technology. The COVID-19 vaccine technology has been successfully transferred to various global manufacturers where it is currently been produced in large scales and tested in clinical trials, highlighting how this research brings us one step closer to keeping us safe.

Tito's committed $2,000,000 over 2 years.

Folks may or may not know that our gut – specifically the gut microbiome – has a variety of beneficial effects on human health. However, our gut has been the target of quite a few disorders and diseases. This project, partially funded by Tito’s, is hoping to tackle just that by developing a system that can specifically pinpoint our gut and its components to better understand how certain bacteria affects human health; that work could drastically change the way we use antibiotics and probiotics.

Tito's committed $389,608 over 2 years.

Tito’s is supporting efforts by The Ocean Cleanup to clean the Ozama River in the Dominican Republic by using a large Interceptor™ cleaning barge. This plan of action is part of a bigger project which has goals of cleaning the river, improving waste management, educating community members, creating awareness, and promoting recycling.

Tito's committed $705,627 over 3 years.

In addition to the work being done in the Dominican Republic, Tito’s is also helping fund a model that will help predict how much plastic is making its way into rivers with a goal to better use the Interceptor™ barge at serving the area. To get the model running, three rivers will be monitored for three years, tracking waste, rainfall, wind, run-off, land use, vegetation, and how the rivers run through the surrounding cities. The hope is to show ways in which the model can make a real difference in communities, encouraging new barges to be deployed and bringing The Ocean Cleanup one step closer to oceans free of plastic.

Tito's committed $705,627 over 3 years.

The Asteroid Institute is working to protect our planet from asteroid impacts. When an asteroid hits the Earth, not only are people at potential risk but there can be long negative impacts on our atmosphere. To keep that from happening, the Asteroid Institute is informing other organizations on how to best protect our planet and Tito's is lending a hand. By helping fund The Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping (ADAM) - a platform to create a dynamic four-dimensional map of our solar system - Tito's is supporting researchers, educators, and one-day folks like you, to find asteroids and deflect if needed, their journey to Earth.

Tito's committed $1,420,000 over 6 years.