WSU researcher awarded $2.7M to study Lyme disease

PULLMAN — Washington State University researcher Troy Bankhead has been awarded nearly $2.7 million in grants to unlock the secrets of how the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi, manages to evade its host’s immune system and establish a persistent infection.

The two research projects could set the stage for the development of vaccines and new therapeutics for the notoriously difficult to treat disease. Transmitted through tick bites, early symptoms of Lyme disease often resemble mild flu, causing many to delay seeking medical attention until the infection advances to a chronic stage, at which point it is most often difficult to treat and can cause lingering symptoms like fatigue, joint pain and neurological issues.

“Borrelia burgdorferi has developed a sophisticated mechanism to evade our immune system,” said Bankhead, a professor in the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine’s Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology department and director of the college’s Multidisciplinary Program in Infectious Disease (MPID). “Our research can hopefully help us to better understand its processes and lead to the eventual development of new vaccines and treatment options for Lyme disease.”

For the next five years, the National Institutes of Health has committed $1.9 million to Bankhead to study a specific plasmid within B. burgdorferi known as lp17.

Bankhead, throughout the past decade and a half at WSU, has made significant discoveries about the pathogen, including the role of genes on lp17 that enable the bacteria to adapt to various environments within its host, such as the heart and joints — areas commonly affected by Lyme disease.

“We believe this next phase of research funded by the NIH will significantly advance our understanding of lp17’s role in the pathogen’s ability to adapt within its host,” Bankhead said. “Ultimately, it could lead to identifying ways to protect against human infection.”

In addition to the NIH grant, Bankhead has secured a three-year, approximately $800,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to further explore a surface protein on the bacteria called VlsE that appears to play a critical role in B. burgdorferi infection. Earlier research has shown that the VlsE protein undergoes changes through a process called antigenic variation, where its surface epitopes — the parts recognized by antibodies — are altered, making it difficult for the immune system to target the protein. It also appears that VlsE attaches to other surface proteins on B. burgdorferi and shields them from being attacked by the immune system, a process known as epitope shielding.

While researchers have long known about antigenic variation, studying the process has proven challenging due to the inability to generate mutations in the VlsE gene in a laboratory setting. Bankhead’s team, however, recently developed a method to generate these mutations in the lab.

“That’s really hampered any progress in studying and breaking down the system, but we finally figured out a way to do it,” Bankhead said. “It was a tough nut to crack, that’s for sure.”

The funding from the Department of Defense will allow Bankhead to refine and develop their processes for generating antigenic variation in VlsE to further explore epitope shielding and investigate other genetic elements that may be involved, paving the way for a deeper understanding of the mechanism.

Research Assistant Professor Preeti Singh will assist with the DoD project, while research technician Maggie Munoz will contribute to the NIH project.

    Ticks like the one shown above can spread Lyme disease among animals and humans.