Main Menu

Coronaviruses (CoVs) can cause severe respiratory disease with high fatality rates in humans. The 2002-2003 SARS-CoV epidemic resulted in 8098 cases and 744 deaths, and MERS-CoV, which emerged in 2012, has resulted in 2144 cases and over 750 deaths as of March 2018. Currently, there are no effective prophylactic or therapeutic measures, and because other CoVs are poised to emerge as new human pathogens, there is a need to define a general CoV vaccine solution.

Anthrax toxin proteins available for licensing. Bacillus anthracis hosts containing plasmids expressing the following proteins are available. (Host strains are generally BH480, or sometimes BH460. Modest amounts of purified proteins (10-50 mg) could also be provided):

1. PA.

Details for this material are provided in the NIH AIDS Reagent Program Catalog (Catalog# 341): https://www.aidsreagent.org/reagentdetail.cfm?t=cell_lines&id=152.

Expression, purification, and validation of anthrax toxin proteins.

Ccr9^-/- mice may be useful for studying the role of CCR9 in T lymphocyte development and migration.

Mice will be distributed by The Jackson Laboratory; details about this mouse strain (Stock No. 027041) may be found at https://www.jax.org/strain/027041.

B. anthracis strains BH480; plasmids encoding anthrax edema factor (EF) variants pSJ136EFOS, pSJ 136EFA and pSJ 136EFR.

This technology is directed towards a potential treatment for a new disease, CHAPLE (Complement Hyperactivation, Angiopathic thrombosis, and Protein-Losing Enteropathy), identified by NIAID researchers. CHAPLE is associated with GI symptoms and vascular thrombosis and is caused by loss-of-function variants in the gene encoding the complement regulatory protein CD55. The disease is caused by enhanced activation of the complement pathway and complement-mediated induction of intestinal lymphangiectasia and protein-losing enteropathy.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease caused by activated autoimmune T lymphocytes in patients resulting in inflammatory demyelination in the central nervous system. Current treatments are focused on functional control of these activated autoimmune T cells, but these treatments are non-specific T cell inhibitors and have serious, sometimes fatal side effects. A specific therapy aimed at eliminating these autoimmune T cells through restimulation-induced cell death (RICD) could cure the disease and overcome the fatal side effects of current therapies.

There is a great need for broadly protective, “universal” influenza virus vaccines given the antigenic drift and shift of influenza viruses and the variable protective efficacy of the current influenza vaccines. This technology relates to a broadly protective, “universal” influenza vaccine candidate composed of a cocktail of different low pathogenicity avian influenza virus subtypes inactivated by betapropiolactone (BPL).

Engineered chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) that are expressed in cytotoxic T cells and natural killer (NK) cells have been used to specifically target tumor cells. However, CAR-T and CAR-NK cells are still subject to down regulation by their inhibitory receptors after injection into patients.