Persistent Lyme Disease (PLD) Archives - Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary with a Convergence of Scientists, Clinicians, Patients and Celebrity Talent

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Celebrates Its 10^th Anniversary with a Convergence of Scientists, Clinicians, Patients, and Celebrity Talent

BAL honors the 2023 Younger Family Emerging Leader Award Winner, announces iHeartRadio partnership and acknowledges the perseverance of patients with persistent Lyme disease

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., June 13, 2023—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, celebrated its 10^th anniversary in May at LymeAid ®, its preeminent annual fundraising event, and announced Andriy Batchinsky, MD, as the winner of a $150,000 Younger Family Emerging Leader Award. A supportive audience of scientists, clinicians, patients, and philanthropists celebrated progress and commitment to ongoing research into tick-borne diseases, and iHeartRadio announced a partnership in honor of beloved DJ and radio host Jeffrey Vandergrift (“JV”), who passed away with Lyme disease earlier this year. LymeAid raised $683,000 of which 100 percent goes directly to fund scientific research, education, and prevention programs for Lyme disease, a potentially disabling infection that impacts an estimated half a million Americans each year.

Emmy-award winning comedian Dana Carvey, Master of Ceremonies for the event, was joined by The Bacon Brothers and local San Francisco band Pop Rocks, who were the musical guests for this evening of laughter, dining, and dancing to support cutting-edge discoveries and scientific breakthroughs. The fund-a-need for this event was Lyme Disease Biobank, a Bay Area Lyme Foundation program initiated in 2014 to collect and distribute blood, urine, and tissue samples for investigators working on developing diagnostics and treatment for tick-borne diseases.

“This is an amazing time for infectious disease research, offering great hope for patients. While we have made strides, our work is not done. We need to figure out the underlying cause of persistent Lyme disease and find a solution,” said keynote speaker Bill Robinson, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University, who shared ongoing research exploring ways to weaponize antibodies against persistent Lyme disease.

National Lyme Clinical Trials Network Gains Its First West Coast Center, Thanks to $1M+ Donation from Bay Area Lyme Foundation

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

National Lyme Clinical Trials Network Gains Its First West Coast Center, Thanks to $1M+ Donation from Bay Area Lyme Foundation

The University of California San Francisco Lyme Clinical Trials Center will support innovative clinical trials to develop treatments for patients with persistent Lyme disease

Portola Valley, CA, March 09, 2023—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, announces it has awarded more than $1M to the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) for the development of a Lyme Clinical Trials Center. This new center will become the first West Coast site of the Lyme Clinical Trials Network. The Network aims to address the need for high quality, innovative clinical trials to develop evidence-based treatments for patients with persistent Lyme symptoms following initial antibiotic treatment—a population that has grown to more than two million Americans and continues to increase.

“The founding of the UCSF Lyme Clinical Trials Center provides a unique opportunity for Lyme patients to participate in the next generation of therapeutic trials to combat this devastating disease,” said Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, of the University of California San Francisco who will lead the UCSF Lyme Clinical Trials Center. “Very few clinical trials have been initiated to investigate therapeutic solutions to address persistent symptoms of Lyme disease, and we hope to change this.”

UCSF will join the Lyme Clinical Trials Network led by Columbia University, which includes Children’s National Hospital (part of the National Institutes of Health), and Johns Hopkins University. This important effort is funded by the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation.

Patient Participation is the Key to Research Gains

Biobank collection at Gordon Medical Associates

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Leading the Way Series

“With the lack of government initiative to make Lyme and tick-borne diseases easy to diagnose and simple to cure, it’s up to organizations like Bay Area Lyme and Lyme Disease Biobank to expand our understanding of tick-borne diseases.” –Harrison S., LDB participant

“I participated in the Biobank program because I want to support legitimate science—it’s the compass pointing us in the direction that will lead to better diagnostics and therapeutics for Lyme patients. I am grateful that BAL is funding this critical research which is so sorely needed, and doing it expeditiously. It goes a long way to make up for the five decades of inaction by the CDC and HHS.” – Rebecca W., LDB participant

Over three days in June, the Lyme Disease Biobank (LDB) welcomed participants to Gordon Medical Associates, our LDB collection site in San Rafael, CA. Persistent/chronic Lyme patients traveled from as far away as Sacramento, CA, and Reno, NV, to donate blood and urine samples to the Biobank. LDB, a program of Bay Area Lyme Foundation, was founded to ensure an adequate number of samples for researchers investigating Lyme and tick-borne diseases.

Calling All Scientists: Bay Area Lyme Foundation Now Accepting Applications for 2022 Emerging Leader Award

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Calling All Scientists: Bay Area Lyme Foundation Now Accepting Applications for 2022 Emerging Leader Award

Grant aims to inspire new research for the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease

PORTOLA VALLEY, California, December 6, 2021—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, is announcing a call for entries for their 2022 Emerging Leader Awards (ELA), which 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. At least two grants in the amount $100,000 each will be awarded. Proposals must have a defined scientific approach and rationale that can advance diagnostics or treatments for Lyme disease, and applicants are encouraged to bring innovative learnings from other therapeutic areas to their research projects. Applications will be accepted through March 15, 2022, at midnight Pacific Time. The full criteria and application for this grant award can be found here.

“The world is seeing firsthand the damage that infections can cause—both in acute and chronic forms. Just has COVID has encouraged collaboration, we hope that existing Lyme scientists as well as scientists from other disease areas will apply for this grant, offering new hypotheses and technologies to diagnose and treat Lyme and other tick-borne disease,” said Wendy Adams, research grant director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation.

Bay Area Lyme’s November 2021 Speaker Series Event: Bringing Hope and Support to Lyme Patients in San Diego

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Happenings Series

Why is the human immune system so complicated? Why are Lyme and tick-borne diseases so challenging for medical scientists to understand and for doctors to treat? And what is happening in the world of Lyme disease research that may offer hope to patients suffering from the effects of Lyme and TBDs on their continually assaulted immune systems?

On November 3, Bay Area Lyme Foundation and Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute jointly hosted an audience of physicians, scientists, patients, supporting family members, and medical providers in La Jolla, CA, to hear a panel of distinguished speakers address the subject of how the human immune system responds to the bacterial or viral assault of a tick-borne infection.

The San Diego event was part of Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s ongoing Distinguished Speaker Series. The Speaker Series format brings together a panel of distinguished individuals, typically including a researcher, a physician, and a Lyme patient advocate. By giving varied perspectives on topics relevant to Lyme and tick-borne diseases (TBDs), Bay Area Lyme provides a platform for the discussion of new scientific discoveries and other developments relevant to Lyme. The series also fosters community-building for patients seeking answers to the challenges of this debilitating disease.

Part of this session’s discussion explored the frustration experienced by countless Lyme patients that most medical providers and physicians are so poorly educated regarding Lyme and TBDs. “They don’t test for all types of TBDs, don’t agree on treatments, aren’t trained to recognize or treat heart problems caused by TBDs, and over-prescribe powerful immune suppressants which can be deadly for TBD patients,” criticized David Haney, PhD, biochemist, patient advocate and panelist. “San Diego physicians are under the mistaken impression that there is no Lyme disease in California, but it has been established in the state since the 1970s. People also travel, and a tick-borne infection is more than just Borrelia burgdorferi. This has been proven in multiple studies,” he added. “Academic studies show that Babesia duncani and several species of tick-borne Borrelia are more prevalent in the West than the East.”

“Traditional healthcare needs to learn to diagnose and treat tick-borne diseases,“

– David Haney, PhD

How Do You Build a Biobank to Solve the Problem of Lyme Disease? Literally – One Tick Bite at a Time

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Science is all about asking questions and finding answers. It attracts the curious, the driven, the questioners and fact seekers—the people who won’t accept the status quo and who are always pushing to learn more. If we keep asking science the right questions, we’re bound to get to the right answers eventually. It’s simple, right?

Unfortunately, not. As with everything about Lyme disease the answers to the questions are not so simple. Lyme is a complicated, nuanced disease with many challenging attributes, so much so that even the most experienced clinicians and medical researchers struggle to understand the many ways the infection impacts the human body. So, if you’re going to try and solve the puzzle of Lyme disease, where is the best place to start? How do you get all the pieces in place to move the needle to solve the complexity of this disease?

Enter Bay Area Lyme Foundation and Principal Investigator, Liz Horn PhD, MBI. When they were planning this project, they asked research scientists in the field of Lyme disease what were their big obstacles to finding out more about Lyme? What did scientists need so that they could start chipping away at the conundrum of this horrible disease?