10 ms·

An mRNA-based anti-tick vaccine

• andrewclunn 5y ago
  An article on the subject without a paywall: https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2021/12/a-lab-stage-mrna-vaccine-targeting-ticks-may-offer-protection-against-lyme-and-other-tick-borne-diseases/ https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2021/12/a-lab-st...
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• theptip 5y ago
  Interestingly, there was a Lyme vaccine in the late 90s that was pulled from the market: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/ I think it’s a shame it was withdrawn, with a low effectiveness of 80% and even requiring annual boosters I’d view that as a great option if I lived somewhere with deer ticks. Lyme disease is scary.
  • partiallypro 5y ago
    I think the alpha-gal allegy is also scary. Hopefully this will help with that.
    • shagie 5y ago
      For a bit on this - from Radiolab https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/alpha-gal https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/alpha... There was also a followup a few weeks ago - https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/return-alpha-gal https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/retur...
  • giantg2 5y ago
    I think the problem is that the main way of testing for Lyme is to test for the antibodies. So what if you fall in the 20%? How will you know? You'll still end up being treating whether vaccinated or not.
    • coolso 5y ago
      > You'll still end up being treating whether vaccinated or not. Isn’t the typical treatment a course of antibiotics? In other words the risks from being “unnecessarily” treated should be fairly low.
      • throwawayboise 5y ago
        Any unnecessary use of antibiotics should be avoided, as it can create an environment for the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
        • coolso 5y ago
          Yes, but I believe the most common antibiotics prescribed for Lyme disease are doxycycline and monocycline, two antibiotics that are used by millions daily (on a somewhat long-term basis) already for the management of things like acne. While certainly not ideal, with 8 million prescriptions in the US alone, I'm not sure an additional potentially unnecessary course of doxycycline is the worst thing in the world when compared to the possibility that the alternative is full blown Lyme disease.
      • giantg2 5y ago
        It's sort of the inverse. If you're treated either way, then the vaccine is unnecessary. There are risks, even if rare, associated with vaccines. Basically, there's no value added and a very slight increase of risks.
    • CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
      Could we not check for the type of antibodies just like we do with covid?
      • steffen84 5y ago
        This how it’s done in germany. Just got tested for Lyme disease. Tick bite was in late summer no rash. The skin in the area changed to red/blue after 5 months, so i got tested and the test was positive. Antibodies IgG 46, IgM 5. Now 3 weeks of antibiotics.
  • TelixBBS 5y ago
    • polskibus 5y ago
      What are you taking about? It’s in most of Europe, Asia etc. climate changes pushed ticks to new areas. It’s not just “east northern states”.
      • TelixBBS 5y ago
        • chris_wot 5y ago
          HN is read by people all over the world. Not just those in the U.S.
          • TelixBBS 5y ago
      • Den-vr 5y ago
        https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/tables.html https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/tables.html Indeed, it is not just "east northern states."
        • klyrs 5y ago
          I know one of the people who is represented in that table. He got bit in New Jersey, and didn't notice the target growing on his chest until he was driving home, and didn't get treated until he arrived home in Washington (because that's where he's insured; go healthcare). The CDC would count that as a Washington State incident. See point 3 in the study's stated limitations[1]: > 3. Surveillance data are captured by county of residence, not county of exposure. Given that he was 1 of 12 cases in that year, I wouldn't interpret that table as proof that the range of Lyme-infected ticks has spread to Washington state. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/survfaq.html https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/survfaq.html
  • Den-vr 5y ago
    I agree the disease is scary. The antibiotic regiment has real side-effects, I've known it to cause sunburns from casual sunlight exposure. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/tables.html https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/tables.html
    • detritus 5y ago
      Ooh, reminds me of my days abusing St John's Wort (amongst a great many other things) during Uni days and feeelig my skin bristle and burn in the heat of light shards of sunlight streaming between otherwise closed curtains... .
    • elric 5y ago
      Oh! This happened to me, and I thought I was just crazy sensitive or something, but it turns out to be an actual thing? After a few days on antibiotics for lyme, I walked to the shop to buy sunscreen. Spent maybe 20 minutes outside. Worst sunburn I've ever had. Anything that can help prevent tick borne diseases is a win in my book. In Western Europe, in many cases that should probably include restoring wildlife habitats...
      • grepfru_it 5y ago
        Doxycycline? I thought that was a known side effect. My dermatologist warned me about it when I went on a course during the summer months. This was over a decade ago, maybe they stopped warning patients?
        • javagram 5y ago
          Doctors seem to forget to do that sometimes, or the patients miss it. Someone I knew was put on a three month course and got a unusual sunburn, later I googled doxycycline and realized the likely connection.
      • hermitdev 5y ago
        My dad developed a sun allergy after going on a specific antibiotic following a spider bite. Been too long for me to recall what the antibiotic was, but I remember him having to apply sunscreen for even under his clothes, long sleeves, pants, gloves and wide brimmed hat through out the summer. If memory serves, it lasted several months, quite a while after he was done with the treatment. Also, I've only seen people mentioning Lyme disease, but Rocky Mountain spotted tick fever is another tick borne disease you don't want to catch. My understanding it's also one of the main reasons a biosafety level 4 facility is being built in Hamilton, MT [0]. Though, I had thought the facility had been built a long time ago. [0] https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/biosafety-labs-needed https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/biosafety-labs-needed
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    Veterinary vaccination for lyme disease is common. According to Wikipedia, the human vaccine was withdrawn due to poor market performance. Claims of autoimmune-type side effects led to several lawsuits, and though CDC and FDA found no connection to the vaccine, the public largely rejected it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Vaccination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Vaccination
  • moneywoes 5y ago
    Any reason it can’t be brought back?
• ce4 5y ago
  Interesting. That is the second vaccine in 4 months, Pfizer / Valnevas's upcoming (non mRNA) VLA15 was discussed here 4 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28312868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28312868
  • cromulent 5y ago
    I’m hopeful that a side effect of this pandemic is a new age of vaccine capability.
    • WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
    • bayesian_horse 5y ago
      I'd say that the pandemic just made the mRNA technology more visible and famous. All those vaccines were already in the works. I actually remember being told more than ten years ago in university lectures about such technologies. And that there was some technology that used DNA bonded to gold particles, and I think those would be shot through the skin or something. Never heard much of that again ... though... Coincidentally I saw "No time to die" last night.
• _Microft 5y ago
  Google Scholar seems to be a referrer that unlocks the paywall: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=55578496001721736&hl=de&as_sdt=0,5 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=55578496001721736...
  • exikyut 5y ago
    Sadly not here.
• _Microft 5y ago
  Summary: the tests were conducted on guinea pigs because they can develop immune reactions to repeated tick bites like humans do. Mice do not seem to be suited for that for once. The vaccine was administered intradermally. It consists of nucleoside-modified mRNA encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles like we know them from Covid vaccines already. The contained mRNA sequences encode 19 different proteins that are usually found in the saliva of a particular kind of tick in the US. These proteins were selected because of prior research it was known that they seemed to cause inflammatory reactions in the host. The inflammatory reaction that occured at the site of the tick bite hampered feeding of the ticks and reduced risk of disease transmission. The vaccine mostly seems to buy more time to remove the ticks before an infection can take place because the disease causing bacteria was not directly targeted by the vaccine.
  • SamBam 5y ago
    Interesting. At first I figured the title was misleading — surely they meant an anti-Lyme disease vaccination — but it turns out that, no, they mean exactly that: anti-tick. They're training the immune system to recognize the tick saliva. This means that the immune system would recognize the bite much quicker, attack anything associated with it, and in general activate the body's innate immune system faster, leading to a faster response by the adaptive immune system. In their trials on hamsters, none of the hamsters with the vaccine got Lyme disease, even though it wasn't a vaccine directly targeting Lyme.
    • Eric_WVGG 5y ago
      That sounds amazing! The irony is, in the United States at least, a tick-proofing vaccine would be most useful in areas where the population has a relatively dim perspective on mRNA vaccines.
      • chrononaut 5y ago
        > The irony is, in the United States at least, a tick-proofing vaccine would be most useful in areas where the population has a relatively dim perspective on mRNA vaccines. In what sense? The states most affected by Lyme[0] are generally the most (COVID-19) vaccinated in the US[1] [0] https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/datasurveillance/maps-recent.html https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/datasurveillance/maps-recent.html [1] https://covidactnow.org/?s=27521640 https://covidactnow.org/?s=27521640
• GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Will this be a neutralizing vaccine? I like the idea of mRNA based vaccines but unless it prevents infections and is permanent like for polio, I don’t see any great uptake if it’s expected to decompose rapidly like the COVID vaccines.
  • CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
    What would a neutralizing vaccine against ticks look like? And why would it matter that much for a parasite that doesn't usually go from human to human? The polio vaccination is 4 doses, and a booster every 10 years if you are at risk. Maybe the covid vaccines will fare similarly. Two shots very close to each other isn't ideal for immunisation, we knew that from the beginning.
    • GhettoComputers 5y ago
      It would cause tick saliva from causing infection for a lifetime, it matters so you can give a vaccine and not need to upkeep it especially in rural areas. It matters because it will prevent it forever. I think I’m thinking of something that lasts longer, someone mentioned a binding vaccine. What does at risk of polio mean? I read that polio infections only affect Americans who aren’t vaccinated and touch recently vaccinated baby feces. If you aren’t in that situation you won’t get polio.
      • CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
        As I understand it that's not what neutralizing vaccine means (if it even is well defined). It means you will not get an infection when you are vaccinated, not that being vaccinated will last for a lifetime. This in contrast to leaky vaccines which make you less sick but still allow for infection and transmission. Since this vaccine does not target anything that causes diseases, it's there to make the tick detach, I don't see how neutralizing makes any sense to this vaccine. >What does at risk of polio mean? Going abroad to places where there is still polio for example. Checked again and apparently it's not a booster every 10 years but once after at least 10 years.
  • 5y ago
• grouphugs 5y ago
• throwawaymanbot 5y ago
• cashsterling 5y ago
  This is really awesome. I lived for ~5 months out on east long island NY (Riverhead area) and the tick situation out there is horrible. The majority of people who live out there year round have suffered from some tick-born illness. Several of my co-workers got ticks and had to go on course of broadband antibiotics. Daily tick checks for myself and my kids was standard practice. Otherwise, east long island is beautiful.
• bayesian_horse 5y ago
  From my university courses in veterinary medicine I remember them telling us about a vaccine against actual ticks. Particularly the proteins lining the tick guts. Normally those would not enter the blood stream and so no antibodies would be generated against these. Anyway, dogs with this vaccines would get bitten by ticks, and the ticks would eventually die... Also, why post an article that isn't even available on scihub?
• exikyut 5y ago
  We need a subthread about the fact that I can't access this through Sci-Hub. I'll start: why isn't it on Sci-Hub yet??
• bayesian_horse 5y ago
  I hope vaccinations will develop into some kind of regular maintenance thing like software updates. With the mRNA technology that would be really easy. Scary for many people, also, but really, why not? Every year there are scientific reasons to update the immunization for almost everyone against certain antigens. This way we may eliminate many strains of Sars-Cov-2, Influenza, other cold viruses, measles, maybe even HIV and the Herpes family eventually. Usually, there's also no reason not to give multiple vaccines in one go, even mix them up in one vial. It's usually not done for several convenience reasons. Mixing them up makes statistical analysis harder, also you can't demix them if one of them gets pulled and so on. But there's no medical reason there couldn't be a single "general update vaccine" for a dozen or more different antigens.
• PostThisTooFast 5y ago
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