Meeting the unmet need for a vaccine is the top priority for researchers studying Lyme disease, which infects about 476,000 people in the U.S. each year and can come with severe complications such as ongoing fatigue and joint issues. Vaccine developers have come close to success, but no human vaccine has yet been commercially viable.
After decades of trial and error, a promising new target is emerging—the Lyme bacterial protein CspZ, which the bacteria use to evade detection from the body’s immune system. CspZ first emerged as a candidate while scientists were looking for proteins that might be evolutionarily conserved across different Lyme bacteria strains and so generate a broad protective response.
“We’ve known for years that CspZ would be an ideal vaccine target because it’s produced in abundance during…