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October 28, 2002
U.S. IMMUNIZATION NEWS
"A New Lyme Vaccine With Roots at B.N.L."
New York Times (www.nytimes.com) (10/27/02) P. 14LI; Cotsalas, Valerie
Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) have created a new vaccine for Lyme disease that is genetically engineered to attack different strains of the bacteria that causes the disease. The vaccine, which is still in the very early stages [of development], does not yet have a commercial name and has not yet been tested on humans. Three strains of the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi can cause Lyme disease, and the new vaccine has been created to protect against all of them; only one strain has been detected in North America, while all three have been found in Europe and Asia. For the vaccine project, which was financed with $2.5 million in grant money from the National Institutes of Health, BNL scientists used the National Synchrotron Light Source, one of BNL's most powerful machines, to dissect the structure of the Lyme surface protein. The vaccine is currently being developed by Baxter Healthcare Corp., and a Baxter spokesperson noted that it could be "five to seven years before there's a commercially available vaccine."
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