Bay Area Lyme Foundation Selects National Winner of the 2024 Emerging Leader Award for Research of Combination Therapies to Treat Chronic Lyme Disease
01 Agosto 2024 - 10:00AM
Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease
research in the US, announces the recipient of the 2024 Emerging
Leader Award (ELA), which is designed to support new and innovative
research and aims to attract aspiring new scientific talent to the
field of Lyme. This year’s winner, Trever Smith, PhD, Research
Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts
University School of Medicine, will receive $150,000 for his work
to identify precise treatment combinations that more effectively
target persistent Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) infection in persistent
Lyme patients. For this research, Dr. Smith intends to develop a
first-of-its-kind drug interaction compendium to help prioritize
the most effective combinations for testing in pre-clinical models
of Lyme disease. To do so, Dr. Smith will leverage techniques he
and other researchers use to identify effective drug combinations
against other infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, and
translate them for Bb. Due to the difficulty in diagnosing and
treating Lyme disease, it is estimated that over two million
patients currently suffer from the debilitating later-stage
symptoms of persistent Lyme in the US, and there are currently no
FDA-approved treatments for the persistent symptoms of Lyme
disease.
“While combination therapies to treat chronic Lyme have shown
promise in early research and are widely used with success in other
disease areas, the vast majority of chronic Lyme patients are not
able to benefit from combination therapies,” said Wendy Adams,
research grant director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation. “Dr. Smith’s
research aims to change this, as it builds on his previous research
success in tuberculosis to bring the hope of combination therapies
for Lyme to the forefront and seeks to give clinicians and
researchers a better understanding of the advantages of combining
current FDA-approved treatments in Lyme disease.”
Smith’s Emerging Leader Award research project will use
computational tools and direct measurement of drug interaction
outcomes, including high-throughput drug interaction screening
techniques, to develop a comprehensive drug interaction dataset.
This data will determine which drug combinations are most
efficacious in eradicating Bb in vitro. The efficacy of the
identified drug combinations will then be tested in a chronically
infected in vivo model of Lyme disease. Multi-omics analyses and
imaging studies will also be performed to identify borrelial cell
death mechanisms of these combinations. The project will expand our
understanding of how drug combinations target and kill Bb.
“At Bay Area Lyme Foundation, we continually seek to support
researchers who can apply proven scientific approaches from other
disease areas and tap already-approved therapeutics to quickly
advance care for patients, and Dr. Smith’s research intentions
address both of these goals,” said Linda Giampa, executive
director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation. “We are very hopeful that Dr.
Smith can build on his previous research success to make strides
toward improved treatment for the millions of patients managing
chronic Lyme today.”
Dr. Smith’s research follows BAL's longstanding support for
researchers working on combination therapy, including Monica
Embers, PhD, and Ying Zhang, MD, PhD. This work is part of the
ongoing efforts at Tufts University by Dr. Smith and previous
Emerging Leader Award recipient Peter Gwynne, PhD, to identify new
drugs that target Bb. Dr. Smith and Dr. Gwynne are members of the
Tufts University Lyme Disease Initiative, which leverages
specialized expertise in tick-borne illnesses to advance and
innovate treatments for Lyme and prevent disease transmission.
Previous Emerging Leader Award recipients have come from
institutions, including Brandeis University, Harvard University,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Louisiana State University,
North Carolina State University, Stanford University School of
Medicine, Texas A&M, Tulane University, University of
California San Francisco, Rockefeller University, Stanford
University, Tufts University, and Northwestern University. Most of
these projects were in the early stages of research, and the
Emerging Leader Award enabled scientists to generate data required
for government funding. Many findings have been accepted for
presentation at well-respected scientific forums or are detailed in
peer-reviewed papers.
Since 2014, these awards have been given annually to promising
scientists who have identified a defined approach to improve
diagnostics or therapeutics for Lyme disease. Scientists or
clinicians interested in applying for the 2025 Emerging Leader
Award or learning about the other funding opportunities that the
Bay Area Lyme Foundation offers throughout the year should visit
https://www.bayarealyme.org/our-research/grant-process/.
About Lyme DiseaseThe most common vector-borne
infectious disease in the US, Lyme disease is a potentially
disabling infection caused by bacteria transmitted through the bite
of an infected tick to people and pets, and can be potentially
passed from a pregnant mother to her unborn baby. If caught early,
most cases of Lyme disease can be effectively treated, but it is
commonly misdiagnosed due to lack of awareness and inaccurate
diagnostic tests. Based on the trajectory of Lyme disease cases
documented by CDC between 2010 and 2018, Bay Area Lyme estimates
that there are now more than 620,000 new cases of Lyme disease each
year, and, as a result of the difficulty in diagnosing and treating
Lyme disease, up to two million Americans may be suffering from the
impact of its debilitating long-term symptoms and
complications.
About Bay Area Lyme FoundationBay Area Lyme
Foundation, a national organization committed to making Lyme
disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure, is the leading public
not-for-profit sponsor of innovative Lyme disease research in the
US. A 501c3 organization based in Silicon Valley, Bay Area
Lyme Foundation collaborates with world-class scientists and
institutions to accelerate medical breakthroughs for Lyme disease.
It is also dedicated to providing reliable, fact-based information
so that prevention and the importance of early treatment are common
knowledge. A pivotal donation from The LaureL STEM FUND covers
overhead costs and allows for 100% of all donor contributions to
the Bay Area Lyme Foundation to go directly to research and
prevention programs. For more information about Lyme disease or to
get involved, visit www.bayarealyme.org or call us at
650-530-2439.
Media contact:Tara DiMiliaPhone:
908-369-7168Tara.DiMilia@tmstrat.com