Bitter taste has evolved in mammals as a crucial, important warning signal against ingestion of poisonous or toxic compounds. However, many beneficial compounds are also bitter, and taste masking of bitter tasting pharmaceutical compounds is a billion dollar industry. The diversity of compounds that elicit bitter-taste sensations is very large and more than two dozen members of the T2R bitter taste receptor family have been identified. Individuals are now known to be genetically predisposed to respond or not to respond to the bitter taste of a number of substances.

Bitter taste has evolved in mammals as a central warning signal against ingestion of poisonous or toxic compounds. However, many beneficial compounds are also bitter and taste masking of bitter tasting pharmaceutical compounds is a billion dollar industry. The diversity of compounds that elicit bitter-taste sensations is vast and more than two dozen members of the TAS2R bitter taste receptor gene family have been identified.

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.

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.

Available for nonexclusive licensing for research uses is the cell line, SV-k1, derived from the Organ of Corti. The line was developed from the stria vascularis, an organ localized on the lateral wall of the cochlea, adjacent to the Organ of Corti, containing cell populations specialized in the production of an endolymph very rich in K+ characteristic of the mammalian inner ear.

Available for nonexclusive licensing as a research material is a conditionally immortalized Organ of Corti cell line called OC-k3. Sensory cells from the auditory organ, the Organ of Corti, are terminally differentiated and cannot be cultured. Moreover, few of them can be isolated per cochlea and survive only few hours after isolation making impossible to use on them many biochemical and molecular biology techniques. OC-k3, expresses many markers of sensory cells and it has already been used as an in vitro model for a variety of studies.

Two cell lines isolated from Pam 212 cells (SCC): Pam LY (lymph node metastasis) and Pam LU (lung metastasis) from metastated in vivo growth in mouse. These stably established cell lines exhibited higher potential to metastasize to lymph nodes and lungs, respectively, in mouse models than their parental Pam 212 cells.

The invention relates to systems and methods for localization microscopy for superresolution imaging of fluorescent molecules. The method utilizes intrinsic bleaching/blinking properties of fluorophores in which superresolution is achieved by capturing successive images and subtracting from each either the subsequent image. The location of a single fluorescent molecule can be identified when the molecules either photobleach, blink off, or blink between successive images using a higher magnification lens to achieve a smaller pixel size.