About the Authors
- Muneki Hotomi
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* E-mail: mhotomi@wakayama-med.ac.jp
Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama-shi, Wakayama, Japan
- Akihisa Togawa
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Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama-shi, Wakayama, Japan
- Masamitsu Kono
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Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama-shi, Wakayama, Japan
- Yorihiko Ikeda
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Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama-shi, Wakayama, Japan
- Shin Takei
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Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama-shi, Wakayama, Japan
- Susan K. Hollingshead
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Affiliation Department of Microbiology, University of Birmingham at Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America
- David E. Briles
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Affiliation Department of Microbiology, University of Birmingham at Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America
- Kenji Suzuki
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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
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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.