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Hearing loss is a common communication disorder affecting nearly 1 in 1,000 children in the United States alone, and nearly 50% of adults by the age of eighty. Hearing loss can be caused by environmental and disease-related factors; however, hearing loss due to genetic factors accounts for approximately 50% of cases.

This invention claims antibodies and/or fragments thereof specific for hepatitis A virus (HAV) and the use of the antibodies in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of hepatitis A. Hepatitis A is the most common type of hepatitis reported in the United States, which reports an estimated 134,000 cases annually, and infects at least 1.4 million people worldwide each year. HAV is a positive sense RNA virus that is transmitted via the fecal-oral route, mainly through contaminated water supplies and food sources.

This invention describes a method for vaccination against Ebola virus. Outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever caused by the Ebola virus, particularly the Zaire subtype, are associated with high mortality rates. The virus is very contagious, and during an outbreak, presents a threat to anybody who comes into contact with an infected person. Because the virus progresses so rapidly and the mortality rate is so high, there is little opportunity to develop natural immunity, making vaccination a promising intervention.

Leishmania parasites are transmitted to their vertebrate hosts by infected phlebotomine sand fly bites. Sand fly saliva is known to enhance Leishmania infection, while immunity to the saliva protects against infection. This invention claims nine major salivary proteins from the sand fly vector of Leishmania major, Phlebotomus papatasi, nucleic acids encoding the proteins, vaccines comprising the proteins and/or nucleic acids, and methods of producing an immune response to prevent Leshmaniasis.

West Nile virus (WNV) has recently emerged in the U.S. and is considered a significant emerging disease that has embedded itself over a considerable region of the U.S. WNV infections have been recorded in humans as well as in different animals. From 1999-2014, WNV killed 1,765 people in the U.S. and caused severe disease in more than 41,762 others. This project is part of NIAID's comprehensive emerging infectious disease program.

The invention relates to a dengue virus tetravalent vaccine containing a common 30-nucleotide deletion (delta30) in the 3'-untranslated region (UTR) of the genome of dengue virus serotypes 1, 2, 3, and 4. The previously identified delta30 attenuating mutation, created in dengue virus type 4 (DEN4) by the removal of 30 nucleotides from the 3'-UTR, is also capable of attenuating a wild-type strain of dengue virus type 1 (DEN1).

An expression vector with a unique promoter that results in higher level of protein expression than vectors currently in use is available for licensing from the NIH. The elevated levels of expression are achieved through use of a specific promoter, known as CMV/R, in which the Human T-Lymphotrophic Virus (HTLV-1) Long Terminal Repeat (LTR) R-U5 region is substituted for a portion of the intron downstream of the CMV immediate early region 1 enhancer (Barouch et al., 2005). Sequences of 95% or better homology to CMV/R can be used as well.

This invention relates to a VAC-BAC shuttle vector system for the creation of recombinant poxviruses from DNA cloned in a bacterial artificial chromosome. A VAC-BAC is a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) containing a vaccinia virus genome (VAC) that can replicate in bacteria and produce infectious virus in mammalian cells.

Purines such as adenosine and ATP have been shown to play a wide array of roles in biological systems such as inter alia, modulator of vasodilation and hypotension, muscle relaxant, central depressant, inhibitor of platelet aggregation, regulator of energy supply/demand, responder to oxygen availability, neurotransmitter and neuromodulator. All P1 and P2 receptor nucleoside ligands suffer from chemical instability that is caused by the labile glycosidic linkage in the sugar moiety of the nucleoside.

This technology describes peptide mimotopes of lipooligosaccharides (LOS) from nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) and Moraxella catarrhalis that are suitable for developing novel vaccines against the respective pathogens, for which there are currently no licensed vaccines. The mimotopes not only immunologically mimic LOSs from NTHi and M. catarrhalis but will also bind to antibodies specific for the respective LOS. NTHi and M. catarrhalis are common pathogens that cause otitis media in children and lower respiratory tract infections in adults.