Blog - Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Combination Antibiotic Therapies May Be Capable of Eradicating Lyme Disease, According to Investigational Study Funded by Bay Area Lyme Foundation

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Combination Antibiotic Therapies May Be Capable of Eradicating Lyme Disease, According to Investigational Study Funded by Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Study identifies persistent Lyme bacteria in tissue samples and points to need for clinical studies of combination antibiotics in persistent Lyme

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., November 21, 2023—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading public foundation sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, today announced results of a laboratory study published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Microbiology that identifies seven combination therapies that are superior to courses of single antibiotics for treating persistent Lyme disease in an investigational model. These combination therapies were able to eradicate the bacteria from tissue samples, and the study was conducted by Bay Area Lyme Foundation Scientific Advisory Board member Monica Embers Ph.D., along with other researchers from Tulane University.

“Our results support the experience of Lyme disease patients whose symptoms have not resolved after a standard course of antibiotics, and these new data suggest that combination therapy should be investigated in clinical studies for treating persistent human Lyme disease,” said Embers, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology and director of Vector-borne Disease Research at Tulane National Primate Research Center.

While none of the single courses of antibiotics eliminated persistent infection in this investigational study, some combinations of already FDA-approved antimicrobial treatments were able to eradicate the bacteria. Specifically, four different dual combinations of antibiotics (doxycycline and ceftriaxone; dapsone and rifampicin; dapsone and clofazimine; doxycycline and cefotaxime) and three triple combinations of antibiotics and antimicrobials (doxycycline, ceftriaxone and carbomycin; doxycycline, cefotaxime and loratadine; dapsone, rifampicin and clofazimine) eradicated persistent infections of Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.

The Chronic Illness Puzzle: Mold, Metals, Toxins, Infections

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Spotlights Series

In this conversation with Dana Parish, Todd Maderis, ND, talks about his extensive experience treating tick-borne infections, chronic viral infections, mold illness, and other conditions associated with complex chronic illness. He underscores the significance of identifying the root causes of symptoms and how tailoring individualized treatment approaches is key to healing. Dr. Maderis also delves into the role of trauma in chronic illnesses and emphasizes the importance of gut healing and inflammation reduction through dietary choices. Dr. Maderis acknowledges the challenges involved in addressing chronic diseases and stresses the importance of a personalized, patient-centric approach.

“I think a lot of times in conventional medicine, we don’t think beyond the room that we’re sitting in with a patient, we have to ask about the environment. We have to look at more than just the symptoms the person’s presenting with in the office.”

– Todd Maderis

Dana Parish: I am so excited today because I’m here with Dr. Todd Maderis. Thank you so much for being here today. I’m thrilled to talk to you. Let me tell you a little about Dr. Maderis. He’s the founder and medical director of Marin Natural Medicine Clinic in the San Francisco Bay Area. He specializes in treating tick-borne infections, chronic viral infections, mold illness, and other conditions associated with complex chronic illness such as Mast Cell Activation Disorder, and ME/CFS. His approach to treating chronic illness is to identify all underlying causes of symptoms to provide a clear direction for treatment. With over a decade of experience treating Lyme disease and complex chronic illness, he knows that every patient is unique and requires individualized treatment therapy. Welcome! It’s great to see you!

Todd Maderis: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Dana Parish: How’d you get into this mess?

Todd Maderis: Gosh, that’s always a great question. You start going down a rabbit hole and sometimes you wonder, but I wouldn’t change a thing. My first five years of practice, I was treating people with common complaints: digestive issues, fatigue issues, thyroid issues, etc. I’m a naturopathic doctor, so we tend to see people that come with common complaints that maybe they’re not getting resolved in conventional medicine. Then one visit, I had a patient that brought in a Lyme disease test result. It was an iGenex test, but back then the results were pretty hard to interpret.

Ticktective with Dana Parish: The Chronic Illness Puzzle: Mold, Metals, Toxins, Infections

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Todd Maderis, ND

Dr. Todd Maderis is the Founder and Medical Director of Marin Natural Medicine Clinic in the San Francisco Bay Area. He specializes in treating tickborne infections, chronic viral infections, mold illness, and other conditions associated with complex chronic illnesses such as mast cell activation disorder and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. His approach to treating chronic illness is to identify all underlying causes of symptoms to provide a clear direction for treatment. With over a decade of experience treating Lyme disease and complex chronic illnesses, he realizes each patient is unique and requires an individualized treatment strategy.

To read the podcast transcript, click here.

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Research Funded by Bay Area Lyme Foundation Identifies New Investigational Therapy Regimen Capable of Irreversibly Damaging Lyme Bacteria in Laboratory Tests

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Research Funded by Bay Area Lyme Foundation Identifies New Investigational Therapy Regimen Capable of Irreversibly Damaging Lyme Bacteria in Laboratory Tests

Inspired by research that targets cancer tumors, these new findings in Lyme could also lead to novel R&D strategies for other diseases

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif. November 1, 2023—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, today announced the development of a potential new drug, HS-291, that targets and destroys Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Chemical Biology, this laboratory study represents a novel paradigm shift for anti-microbial treatment research as it is the first to target and inhibit Borrelia burgdorferi HtpG (high temperature protein G), a specific type of enzyme within the bacteria that causes Lyme disease— a condition affecting nearly 500,000 new patients annually. The research was conducted at Duke University School of Medicine, with collaboration from University of North Carolina, Tulane University, and Stanford University, and HS-291 is currently in preclinical stage testing at UC Davis.

“As Lyme disease is currently treated with broad spectrum antibiotics and there are no targeted treatments, we are particularly excited about this discovery, and hopeful that our novel Lyme disease therapeutic HS-291 will specifically destroy the Lyme bacterium without off-target effects or antibiotic resistance,” said Timothy Haystead, PhD, professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Duke University School of Medicine, Bay Area Lyme Foundation grantee, and co-lead author. “This research has been an incredible opportunity to leverage knowledge from oncology to Lyme disease in order to design an investigational therapeutic that could one day benefit hundreds of thousands of patients with Lyme.”

This new discovery has implications beyond Lyme disease as it demonstrates that using the drug HS-291 to deliver cellular toxins to HtpG, a type of non-essential enzyme that assists the folding or unfolding of large and complex proteins, greatly expands what can be considered druggable within any pathogen and opens a whole new area of infectious disease research.

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Now Accepting Applications for 2024 Emerging Leader Award and Grant

Emerging Leader Award Call for Entries 2023

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Now Accepting Applications for 2024 Emerging Leader Award and Grant

Annual grant seeks to attract innovative researchers with a new approach for diagnosing and treating tick-borne diseases

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., October 26, 2023—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, is announcing a call for entries for their 2024 Emerging Leader Awards (ELA), which aim to recognize U.S. researchers from academia or the private sector who bring new approaches to the field of Lyme disease and embody the future of Lyme disease research leadership. This year, the Foundation ELA will present a $150,000 award for a researcher who is at the post-doctoral level through associate professor level.

While applicants must have a defined scientific approach to advancing diagnostics and/or therapeutics for Lyme disease, the grants are open to researchers from other therapeutic areas as well as those who have previously worked in Lyme disease research. Applications will be accepted through March 1, 2024 at 11:59pm, Pacific Time. The full criteria and application for this award can be found here.

“The world is seeing firsthand the damage that infections can cause – both in acute and chronic forms –and Lyme is no exception. Even today, it presents a significant hurdle for the scientific research community,” said Wendy Adams, research grant director Bay Area Lyme Foundation. “We intend for our Emerging Leader Award to encourage creative, driven scientists to embrace the challenge of developing accurate diagnostic tests and effective therapeutics for various stages of tick-borne diseases.”

Bay Area Lyme Foundation ELA Winner Uses Metabolic Modeling to Predict 77 Unique Drug Targets in Lyme Disease Bacterium

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bay Area Lyme Foundation ELA Winner Uses Metabolic Modeling to Predict 77 Unique Drug Targets in Lyme Disease Bacterium

Results will help inform future research and development of new Lyme disease therapeutics

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., October 19, 2023—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, today announced the findings of a study identifying new essential gene and enzyme drug targets in Lyme disease bacterium, which resulted, in-part, from a grant provided to Peter Gwynne, one of Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s 2022 Emerging Leader Award (ELA) winners. Published in the peer-reviewed journal mSystems, the study uses the most comprehensive metabolic modeling to date to predict 77 unique drug targets in Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease—a condition affecting nearly 500,000 new patients annually.

“Lyme disease is often treated using long courses of antibiotics, which can cause side effects for patients and risks the evolution of antimicrobial resistance. Our research supplies the blueprint and scaffolding to build better Lyme disease therapeutics that do not have off-target effects for patients,” said Peter Gwynne, PhD, lead author on the study, research assistant professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, and Emerging Leader Award winner of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation. “Many of the 77 genes and enzymes predicted as essential represent candidate targets for the development of novel antiborrelial drug development.”

Current clinical guidelines recommend treatment of Lyme borreliosis with broad-spectrum antibiotics, which can pose risks to the patient’s microbiome. The bacterium that causes Lyme disease is extremely host-dependent, with a small genome and limited metabolism—making it an excellent candidate for the development of targeted, narrow-spectrum antimicrobials.

In the study, the researchers used in silico genome-scale metabolic computer modeling to construct a map of B. burgdorferi metabolism. This map was used to predict essential genes and enzymes that can be used as drug targets. Gwynne and the Tufts University School of Medicine research team validated these targets by repurposing existing drugs that kill B. burgdorferi in culture. While these drugs are not viable treatment options themselves, they provide a blueprint for future novel drug development.

Stealth Invader: Unveiling Lyme’s Hidden Past

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Spotlights Series

In this interview, author/filmmaker, Kris Newby, explains the murky history behind the US government’s involvement with Lyme disease and continued efforts to hide how the military’s bioweapons programs caused the spread of tick-borne pathogens. She explains how alliances between pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, university-based research teams, and the government led to inaccurate testing and denials of care, causing untold suffering to millions. Kris draws parallels between Long Covid and chronic Lyme and shines a light on how we are being dismissed, misinformed, and deliberately misled by the very institutions that should be protecting us.

Dana Parish: I’m so excited to welcome Kris Newby. Kris is an award-winning medical science writer and a senior producer of the Lyme documentary Under Our Skin, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was a 2010 Oscar Semifinalist. Her book Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons has won three international book awards. I loved your book so much for journalism and narrative nonfiction. Kris has two engineering degrees and has worked as a science technology writer for Stanford Medical School, Apple Computer, and other Silicon Valley companies. Welcome Kris!

Kris Newby: Thanks Dana, and thanks for having me on the podcast.

Dana Parish: I’m so excited because you are one of the greatest historians of Lyme and you were so helpful to Steve Phillips and me when we wrote our book, Chronic. We loved your book. And Under Our Skin is the film that informed my view of what was really happening with Lyme disease. You’ve been working on Lyme education for 20 years. You’ve done a film, you’ve written a great book, you’ve published articles, you’ve worked in nonprofits, and you recovered from your own tick-borne diseases. How big is the Lyme problem?

Kris Newby: Ginormous and growing. The CDC’s latest estimate is half a million new cases of Lyme disease a year, and I’m sure everyone remembers when Covid hit a half a million. It was like, “Oh no, we have a problem here.” But for some reason, Lyme disease hasn’t bubbled up as a problem. 500,000 cases a year is an average of 1,300 a day. And, obviously, that mostly happened in the summer, so it’s huge. I am often frustrated because I’ve been working in this field for 20 years and not much has gotten better. The disease—this tick-borne disease—if it’s caught early, it can be cured. But we have a test that isn’t reliable in the first month, and later on it’s no better than a coin flip. About 10-30% of the people who are treated with a recommended treatment—according to what study you read—go on to become chronically ill. And the establishment has invested very little in new treatment protocols. I did an analysis with another Bay Area Lyme person of the NIH grants for the last five years, and less than 1% of the Lyme disease NIH budget is spent on treatments.

Dr. Liz Horn Explains How Lyme Disease Biobank Samples are Foundational to the LymeX Diagnostics Prize

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Spotlight Series

In this interview, the LymeX Diagnostic Prize talked with Liz Horn, PhD/MDI, Principal Investigator for Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Lyme Disease Biobank (LDB), about her work in Lyme disease, the challenges researchers face, how the LymeX Diagnostics Prize could help further our understanding of the disease and how Lyme patient samples from our biobank are critical to the competition’s success.

This interview has been edited from the original.

“What’s exciting about the LymeX Diagnostics Prize is that you have a lot of different people with good ideas and different teams with a lot of different technologies trying to solve this problem.”

– Liz Horn, PhD/MDI

The LymeX Diagnostics Prize is a multiphase competition funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation to accelerate the development of Lyme disease diagnostics. Through October 2023, the 10 teams selected to be part of Phase 2 of the LymeX Diagnostics Prize are participating in a virtual accelerator designed to help them refine their concepts for detecting active Lyme disease infections in people. As the Phase 2 accelerator cohort continues to develop their diagnostics, the teams have access to scientific advisors who provide valuable insight and feedback from their extensive experience in Lyme disease diagnostics, one of whom is Dr. Horn. The Phase 2 cohort also has access to the blood and urine samples donated to LDB by Lyme patients.

A cancer biologist by training, Dr. Horn has spent her career working with nonprofit research organizations to help build research programs, registries, and biorepositories. She joined Bay Area Lyme Foundation in 2013 to lead the creation of a Lyme disease biorepository. As a scientific advisor for the LymeX Diagnostics Prize, Dr. Horn is mentoring participating teams through office hours and webinars.

LymeX: As the principal investigator for the Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Lyme Disease Biobank, you have extensive experience in Lyme disease research. How did you first start working in the field, and what are you focusing on now with the biorepository?

Ticktective with Dana Parish: Stealth Invader: Unveiling Lyme’s Hidden Past

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Kris Newby

Kris Newby is an award-winning medical science writer and the senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary UNDER OUR SKIN, which was a 2010 Oscar semifinalist. Her book BITTEN: The Secret History of Biological Weapons and Lyme Disease has won three international book awards for journalism and narrative nonfiction. She has two engineering degrees and has worked as a science/technology writer for Stanford Medical School, Apple, and other Silicon Valley companies.

To read the podcast transcript, click here.

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A Broader Definition of Health Through Ancestral Learning, Diet and Better Understanding of the Human Body

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Spotlights Series

In this podcast episode, host Lia Gaertner interviews Chris Kresser, a renowned expert in functional medicine and ancestral health. Kresser shares his personal health journey, which involved struggling with chronic illness and eventually finding his way to functional medicine. He discusses the importance of zooming in and zooming out in managing chronic illness, as well as the broader definition of health as human flourishing. Kresser also talks about his approach to diet, which involves giving himself permission to eat a variety of foods while prioritizing those that make him feel good. He emphasizes the importance of the ecosystem in managing chronic illness, focusing on factors such as gut health, lifestyle, stress management, and finding joy and fulfillment in life. Kresser concludes by offering advice to individuals with Lyme disease and chronic illness, highlighting the significance of addressing the entire ecosystem rather than solely focusing on the pathogen.

Lia Gaertner: Welcome to the Ticktective podcast and video series, a program of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, where our mission is to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure. I’m your host, Lia Gaertner, director of Education and outreach. Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the USA and is a global issue. This show includes interviews with the researchers we fund, as well as other interesting people in the Lyme scientific community. We are a nonprofit foundation based in Silicon Valley. Thanks to a generous grant that covers all of our overhead, 100% of all donations go directly to support, research and prevention programs. You can find out more or donate@bayarealyme.org.

Lia Gaertner: Thank you, Chris Kresser, for joining me on the Ticktective™ video and podcast series.

Chris Kresser: Thanks for having me, Lia. It’s a pleasure.

Lia Gaertner: Chris Kresser is a renowned expert leading clinician and top educator in the fields of functional medicine and ancestral health. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Paleo Cure, as well as the book Unconventional Medicine. Chris is the co-founder and educational director of the California Center for Functional Medicine and the founder of the Kresser Institute. Chris regularly shares his evidence-based insights from trusted sources and world-renowned health practitioners and coaches through his blogs, webcast interviews, and his own podcast, Revolution Health Radio. So, Chris, during your decade-long struggle with chronic illness, you learned firsthand where healthcare mattered most and where it came up short. After seeking the help of more than 30 healthcare practitioners and ultimately having to learn and implement behavior changes on your own with limited support, you emerged with your health and a vision and drive for changing and improving the practice and education of functional medicine. Can you please tell us about your health journey?

Chris Kresser: I’ll be brief because it was long and arduous, but I took off to travel around the world for a couple of years in my early twenties, and I was doing a lot of surfing. I was in a little village on Sumbawa, which is an island in Indonesia, and a bunch of the people there who were surfing at that break got exposed to a waterborne pathogen, actually several pathogens. There was a stagnant pool of water near the river mouth there, and locals dug a trench to drain that pool into the river mouth. And all of that water where cows had been defecating went out into the surf break, which are often located right at the river mouth. And unbeknownst to a lot of us who were there surfing, we were exposed to it and I would say 70-80% of the people there got quite sick.

I took some antibiotics that I had in my medical kit and the acute phase of it passed relatively quickly. But as I continued to travel after that, I went to the Maldives and was there for a few months and I was in South Africa and Reunion Island, Mauritius, and Madagascar. After about six, seven months, I started feeling really sick and it became clear to me that it wasn’t something that was just temporary that was going to go away. So, I made my way back to Australia and that was where I started to seek medical care. And then when I didn’t make much progress, I decided to go back home to the US and although most of the doctors and other practitioners I saw meant very well and did their best to help me, it was pretty clear that the medical system was not set up to deal with those kinds of problems.