About the Authors

Muneki Hotomi

mhotomi@wakayama-med.ac.jp

Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama-shi, Wakayama, Japan

Akihisa Togawa

Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama-shi, Wakayama, Japan

Masamitsu Kono

Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama-shi, Wakayama, Japan

Yorihiko Ikeda

Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama-shi, Wakayama, Japan

Shin Takei

Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama-shi, Wakayama, Japan

Susan K. Hollingshead

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, University of Birmingham at Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

David E. Briles

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, University of Birmingham at Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Kenji Suzuki

Affiliations Department of Otolaryngology, Second Hospital, School of Medicine, Fujita Health University, Toyoake, Aichi, Japan, The Surveillance Subcommittee, The Japan Society for Infectious Diseases in Otolaryngology, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

Noboru Yamanaka

Affiliations Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama-shi, Wakayama, Japan, The Surveillance Subcommittee, The Japan Society for Infectious Diseases in Otolaryngology, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

Competing Interests

Some intellectual property relating to PspA that is held by the UAB Research foundation includes active patents on the alpha-helical and proline-rich domains of PspA, each of which covers the use of these domains of PspA in protection-eliciting vaccines. The patents for the alpha-helical domain only covers use in a vaccine in the USA. Patents for the proline-rich domain are being pursued worldwide. Drs. Briles and Hollingshead are among the inventors on these patents and could gain monetarily if a PspA-containing vaccine were licensed for human use. Drs. Briles and Hollingshead provided advice concerning PspA family determination and assisted with manuscript preparation, but all of the data was collected the authors’ group in Japan, which has no conflicts of interest with the data obtained. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MH NY. Performed the experiments: MH AT MK YI ST. Analyzed the data: MH NY. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MH MK. Wrote the paper: MH SKH DEB KS NY.