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During lung infection, bloodstream neutrophils (PMNs) responding to infection travel to the airspace lumen. Although successful arrival of microbicidal PMNs to the airspace is essential for host defense against inhaled pathogens, excessive accumulation of PMNs in the lung contributes to the pathogenesis of several prevalent lung disorders, including acute lung injury, bronchiectasis, and COPD. Unfortunately, there is no treatment for controlling PMN accumulation in the lung.

RSV is the most important viral agent of severe respiratory disease in infants and young children worldwide and also causes substantial morbidity and mortality in older adults. RSV is estimated to cause more than 33 million lower respiratory tract illnesses, three million hospitalizations, and nearly 200,000 childhood deaths worldwide annually, with many deaths occurring in developing countries. However, despite the prevalence of RSV and the dangers associated with infection, no RSV vaccine has been successfully developed to date.

Immunoglobulins play a key role in the immune system. CDC has developed and tested hybridoma cell lines (monoclonal antibody (mAb) clones) for human IgG and other immunoglobulins. The mAbs generated from those hybridomas could be used as a reagent (second Ab) of anti-human immunoglobins in a diagnostic assay for SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), the virus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) and other assays that detect antigen specific antibodies from human sera.

Rotaviruses cause severe gastroenteritis in humans and animals globally. Currently, there are eight known serogroups (A-H) of rotaviruses. Group C rotavirus (GpC RV) causes sporadic cases and outbreaks of acute diarrhea in children and adults worldwide. GpC RV is also associated with diarrhea in swine. Currently, no simple and reliable diagnostic test exists for GpC RV, so disease prevalence remains unknown.

Periodontal disease occurs in 10-20% of adults, and constitutes a major cause of tooth loss. About 0.5% of U.S. adolescents between the ages of 14 to 17 years old (about 70,000) have localized early onset periodontitis and 0.1% (17,000) have the more destructive form known as generalized early onset periodontitis. Both types of early onset periodontitis often lead to tooth loss before the age of 20. Extrapolation of these figures up to age 35 leads to estimates of early onset periodontitis having a major impact on the dental health of 400,000 individuals in the U.S. population.

Human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) continues to be the leading viral cause of severe acute lower respiratory tract disease in infants and children worldwide, and also is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in the elderly. A licensed vaccine or antiviral drug suitable for routine use remains unavailable. This invention relates to the use of murine pneumonia virus (MPV—previously known as pneumonia virus of mice, PVM—of family Pneumovirida e) as a vaccine vector expressing the RSV fusion protein F, the most important protective antigen of RSV.

This invention includes the generation and use of two polyclonal antibodies that specifically recognizes the phosphorylation site pThr707 of Neuroligin 4 and pThr739 of Neuroligin 1. A peptide of the site around the phosphorylation site was generated and injected into rabbits to create an immune response. Serum was collected from the rabbits that was then affinity purified. The specificity of the resulting polyclonal antibodies was then determined using biochemical techniques.

This invention relates to two devices that reliably, sensitively, and accurately measures force during handgrip contraction and subsequent relaxation. A delayed relaxation after a sustained and forceful handgrip is a cardinal symptom of myotonic dystrophies (DM). This delayed relaxation, handgrip myotonia, may be a therapeutic response biomarker in clinical trials.

This invention is a novel statistical method for automatically detecting lesions in cross-sectional brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies. OASIS uses multimodal MRI from one image acquisition session and produces voxel-level probability maps of the brain that quantifies the likelihood that each voxel is part of a lesion. Binary lesion segmentations are created from these probability maps using a validated population-level threshold. In this application, fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR), proton density (PD), T2-weighted, and Tl-weighted volumes were used.

Malaria continues to be a life-threatening disease, causing roughly 241 million cases and an estimated 627,000 deaths in 2020, mostly among African children, although in 2020 nearly half of the world’s population was at risk of malaria. There is a big financial burden for antimalarial treatment; direct costs (for example, illness, treatment, premature death) have been estimated to be at least US $12 billion per year and the cost in lost economic growth is many times more than that.