Madison Area Lyme Support Group

The University of Kansas is helping to develop both a Lyme disease vaccine and a Chlamydia vaccine with Lawrence born biotechnology lab, Design-Zyme, and the projects all started with help from a KU graduate student.

Peter Petillo, Design-Zyme founder and CEO, and Professor Scott Hefty, from the KU school of molecular biosciences, act as the foundation for a partnership between university and industry. They said that they have known each other for almost 15 years and met through a mutual colleague at the University. Hefty said that their collaboration between commercial lab and academia gives graduate students and faculty that are early in their careers a lot of opportunity to learn.

Petillo agreed and added, “Most of the students coming out of the program are not going to work in academics. They’re going to work in some sort of an industrial setting.”

This partnership led to fifth year PhD candidate Lexie Cutter obtaining an internship at Design-Zyme, through Hefty.

While Hefty and Petillo had started a Lyme disease vaccine project, and Hefty had introduced the idea of developing a Chlamydia vaccine, it was Cutter’s work through the internship with Design-Zyme and Petillo which pushed the initial Lyme disease vaccine project forward. Cutter said Hefty helped put together the internship with Petillo two summers ago and that her project there was to produce the proteins which formed the Lyme disease vaccine.

KU Students, Faculty and Partners Progressing Vaccine Production

According to Petillo, Design-Zyme’s method for creating a vaccine consists of taking one protein from the disease-causing bacteria and bonding it to another. The proteins are meant to stimulate the immune system and build up a response to the bacteria, which causes a disease.

Petillo said the process for adding proteins together to create vaccines can be more difficult depending on the proteins and that it has been more difficult for the development of the Chlamydia vaccine. This has led to the Chlamydia vaccine ending up behind in development compared to the Lyme disease vaccine. As a result, Cutter is currently working on the continuing production of the Chlamydia vaccine, using the same method that she used when helping to create the Lyme disease vaccine.

However, the Lyme disease vaccine is progressing much faster and other faculty and students on the project have separate roles which contribute to the testing and research of the vaccine. This includes KU Lab Technicians Dominique Jaramillo and Nancy Schwarting.

Jaramillo and Schwarting said they handle mouse injections for the Lyme disease vaccine. This process involves directly injecting a mouse with the vaccine before using another syringe to inject the borrelia burgdorferi bacteria or the bacteria that causes Lyme Disease, into the mouse.  (See link for article)

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**Comment**

Interestingly, the next step will be the ‘tick challenge study’ where they will collect ticks that have the ‘right form of the bacteria.’  This is an admission that the ‘vaccine’ will only be based upon this singular ‘right’ form.  There’s numerous strains of borrelia that people have been infected with.  This is a problem in itself, not to mention the fact patients are often coinfected with other pathogens simultaneously.