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The Leishmania donovani glycoprotein fraction, known as FML, successfully underwent preclinical and clinical (Phase I-III) vaccine trials against canine visceral leishmaniasis (92-95% of protection and 76-80% of vaccine efficacy) when formulated with a QS21 saponin-containing adjuvant. It became the licensed Leishmune vaccine for canine prophylaxis in Brazil. The immune response raised by the vaccine is long lasting, immunotherapeutic and reduces dog infectivity blocking the transmission of the disease, as revealed by an in vivo assay. The preliminary epidemiological control data of vaccinated areas in Brazil indicate that, in spite of the still low vaccine coverage, there was a significant decrease in the incidence of the human and canine disease. A 36-kDa glycoprotein, in the FML complex, is the human marker of the disease, which was protective in mice as native recombinant protein or DNA vaccine. The DNA vaccine is now being tested against the canine disease. This review resumes the development of the second-generation FML-saponin-Leishmune vaccine, its adjuvant and of the NH36 DNA vaccine, toward the identification of its major epitopes that might be included in a possible future synthetic vaccine.

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We dissected the digestive tract of 245 females in pools of 35 flies forming 7 groups. These flies were Lutzomyia longipalpis originating from Lapinha Cave, Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais. Out of the 8 species of bacteria isolated there was a predominancy of Gram negative bacterias (GNB) in the group of non-fermenters of sugar belonging to the following species: Acinetobacter lwoffii, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, Pseudomonas putida and Flavimonas orizihabitans. The group of GNB fermenters were: Enterobacter cloacae and Klebsiella ozaenae. In the Gram positive group we isolated the genera Bacillus thuringiensis and Staphylococcus spp.

SCRAPIE is a prion disease of sheep and goats, and is characterised by the accumulation of pathologically folded prion protein (PrP) derived from host-encoded PrP. For sheep, over 40 polymorphisms of PrP have been described

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