By Anne W. Semmes
The facts are stark. Ticks are on the rise and with climate change their breeding and biting season has lengthened in the Northeast with longer and hotter springs and summers and milder winters. And there’s the enormous cost of what those ticks infected with the Lyme disease bring to nearly half a million citizens a year infected by the disease. Certainly challenging to the health care system to the tune of billions of dollars.
With all the ongoing efforts to protect us from this infectious disease spread from animals a new and promising effort is about to be launched this fall in Connecticut, from where of course the disease took its name, Lyme, CT, discovered there in 1975.
So, the white-footed mouse in our parts is the favorite animal the young black-legged tick feeds on for its bloodmeal. And that mouse is a favored host for Lyme disease. So how does one vaccinate a mouse against Lyme disease? With an oral vaccine! Create a pellet it will eat coated with the vaccine. When the tick feeds off the blood of the vaccinated mouse, it won’t get the infection and thus spread its bad bacteria to people or other animals.
Credit US Biologic, Inc., located in Memphis, Tennessee, and its cofounder Dr. Maria Gomes-Solecki, a professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology & Biochemistry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. She first experimented with a handmade oatmeal-based bait with the vaccine mixed in that evolved to a vaccine-coated pellet found favorable by mice! She’s now reportedly “full of joy” as on her wall is a letter dated this April 27 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It states that “an animal vaccine for Lyme disease that she conceived, funded with federal grants for development, and field tested has been conditionally approved for commercialization.”
So, where was that now licensed oral vaccine first successfully tested to block the spread of Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease? In Redding, CT. “We just solicited cooperation from local residents and asked them if they wanted to test this product that could benefit them by limiting Lyme disease bacterium in the mice on their property,” says scientist Dr. Scott Williams with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES) in New Haven.
Those vaccine-coated pellets were put in a plastic rodent box, tells Williams. “That we could monitor how much had been utilized, and the mice just kept coming back for the pellets over the three-year study period. It was a pellet they could probably store some in their dens and consume throughout the year and over the winter. Which is good for a vaccination type product where they need to be continually exposed to that vaccine in order for it to be effective.”
So, the trial showed that with the mouse vaccine – infected ticks would decrease year after year the vaccine was applied? “Right,” responds Williams.
Surely, time for that pellet to be distributed statewide! “We’re 100 percent able to go into the state of Connecticut,” tells US Biologic President Chris Przybyszewski. “What we’re working through are the final details with the Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP) for the permitting process. We’re going into residential areas. We’ll be going into more public areas, like state parks, and campgrounds, but also more commercial areas, like golf courses, and summer camps.”
But step one with this winning oral vaccine is to introduce it most effectively. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture has asked us to begin working through the pest management industry,” tells Przybyszewski, “to make sure the initial applications are done correctly,” So, the first introduction this fall will be “residential specific,” he says. “Being able to go on people’s properties and put out that timed application station.”
Meet US Biologic CEO Mason Kauffman, entrepreneuring Memphis businessman, a pioneer in the FedEx early days, and an inventor of the LymeShield Station designed to serve the vaccine pellets to a half-acre of property. “This time application station is only about six inches high,” he tells, “and it’s got six sections in it, and then a carousel in the middle that’ll turn a door to a new section of pellets every other week. We put that in a backyard. It opens not only in summer and fall, but actually every quarter of the year.”
For those larger properties in Greenwich, Kauffman says, “You could put several Lyme Shield stations, or the pest management professional could do a hand broadcast. As with golf courses, or campgrounds, or sports fields, it makes more sense to do hand broadcast.”
“We’re competing against an acorn,” shares Kauffman, adding, “We don’t put any type of flavoring, any type of scent. It’s just a very simple pellet, no nutritive factors of note. It’s just the way to deliver the vaccine. What a lot of people don’t realize is that we get the Lyme infection from ticks, but the ticks get it largely from mice. The mice are infected, the ticks will take a bloodmeal on the mice, and then subsequently land on a pet or a human. That’s the cycle that unfortunately happens hundreds of thousands of times every year here in the United States, mostly to children. It’s really sad. Then they could have a debilitating illness for the remainder of their life.”
So, for those homeowners who’ve been working to protect their families by having pesticide sprayed against those ticks is it safe to add the LymeShield Station system in their yards? “This Lyme Shield station and system goes right alongside,” says Przybyszewski. “Lyme disease is out of control, and pest management professionals, for a century, have done what they can to control it. At the same time, they need new tools. They need new innovations. That’s what we’re providing.”
For US Biologic, this revelatory oral animal vaccine is reportedly only a first step. “Since Lyme disease is not the only tick-borne disease that we are dealing with in this country,” tells the company’s Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Jolieke G. van Oosterwijk, “We are also looking at developing vaccines against other tick-borne diseases.”
Those wanting more information on LymeShield can visit LymeShield.com
