Hefty lab partners with Biotech Lab producing vaccines for Lyme disease and Chlamydia

The University of Kansas is helping to develop both a Lyme disease vaccine and a Chlamydia vaccine with Lawrence born biotechnology lab, Design-Zyme, and the projects all started with help from a KU graduate student. 

Peter Petillo, Design-Zyme founder and CEO, and Professor Scott Hefty, from the KU school of molecular biosciences, act as the foundation for a partnership between university and industry. They said that they have known each other for almost 15 years and met through a mutual colleague at the University. Hefty said that their collaboration between commercial lab and academia gives graduate students and faculty that are early in their careers a lot of opportunity to learn. 

Petillo agreed and added, “Most of the students coming out of the program are not going to work in academics. They're going to work in some sort of an industrial setting.” 

This partnership led to fifth year PhD candidate Lexie Cutter obtaining an internship at Design-Zyme, through Hefty. 

While Hefty and Petillo had started a Lyme disease vaccine project, and Hefty had introduced the idea of developing a Chlamydia vaccine, it was Cutter's work through the internship with Design-Zyme and Petillo which pushed the initial Lyme disease vaccine project forward. Cutter said Hefty helped put together the internship with Petillo two summers ago and that her project there was to produce the proteins which formed the Lyme disease vaccine.

KU Students, Faculty and Partners Progressing Vaccine Production

According to Petillo, Design-Zyme's method for creating a vaccine consists of taking one protein from the disease-causing bacteria and bonding it to another. The proteins are meant to stimulate the immune system and build up a response to the bacteria, which causes a disease.  

Petillo said the process for adding proteins together to create vaccines can be more difficult depending on the proteins and that it has been more difficult for the development of the Chlamydia vaccine. This has led to the Chlamydia vaccine ending up behind in development compared to the Lyme disease vaccine. As a result, Cutter is currently working on the continuing production of the Chlamydia vaccine, using the same method that she used when helping to create the Lyme disease vaccine. 

However, the Lyme disease vaccine is progressing much faster and other faculty and students on the project have separate roles which contribute to the testing and research of the vaccine. This includes KU Lab Technicians Dominique Jaramillo and Nancy Schwarting. 

Jaramillo and Schwarting said they handle mouse injections for the Lyme disease vaccine. This process involves directly injecting a mouse with the vaccine before using another syringe to inject the borrelia burgdorferi bacteria or the bacteria that causes Lyme Disease, into the mouse.

KU Lab Technician Dominique Jaramillo counting the amount of growing borrelia burgdorferi bacteria under a microscope in a KU lab on Nov. 19, 2024. Jaramillo grows the borrelia burgdorferi bacteria in a controlled laboratory setting to use them later as a way to test the effectiveness of the Design-Zyme Lyme disease vaccine.

Both Lyme disease and Chlamydia are caused by different bacterial infections which develop into a disease later. 

While the mouse can contract the bacteria which causes Lyme disease, a mouse cannot actually develop Lyme disease. So, rather than testing if the disease itself is spreading, this process tests if the bacteria spreads through the animal or if the vaccine is preventing or decreasing the spread of the disease-causing bacteria within that mouse. 

This same process will be used for the Chlamydia vaccine when it is ready for testing. However, mice can be affected by Chlamydia.  

Petillo said that the next step for the Lyme disease vaccine is the tick challenge study which will be performed by Professor Kathryn Reif from Auburn University. According to Petillo, she will first go out into the field and collect ticks that have the right form of the borrelia bacteria. Then, she will use them on mice which have been given the vaccine to see that they are protected from the bacteria. 

Hefty said that after Reif’s tests are performed in the field, they can move into pre-clinical human trial studies for their Lyme disease vaccine.

Two Vaccines for Two Bacterial Threats  

According to the CDC, 63,000 cases of Lyme disease were reported in the U.S. in 2022 and that number is only estimated to rise. The CDC states that those affected by Lyme disease could experience facial paralysis, fever, arthritis symptoms or severe headaches. Ticks infected with the borrelia bacteria, which causes the disease, are the spreaders. 

Petillo said that the increased spread of Lyme disease is linked to the growth of the tick population which carries the borrelia bacteria. He said that the population of infected ticks has increased significantly for several reasons including a rise in global warming and growth in the deer population.  

“There still isn’t an effective solution on the marketplace to prevent it. Most of the time, it’s treatable with antibiotics but it’d be better not to have it at all,” Petillo said. 

There has not been an available vaccine for Lyme disease since 2002 when the initial LYMErix vaccine was withdrawn from the market by its manufacturer citing poor sales as the reason. However, it was also reported that a small portion of the population who took the vaccine were experiencing arthritis symptoms as side effects to the vaccine’s first of three doses. 

The sexually transmitted disease, Chlamydia, is spreading more as well, specifically among young people. In 2022, the CDC reported 1,649,716 cases in the United States, noting that it impacts women more than men.  

Hefty said that with 50-60 years of efforts, there is still no vaccine for Chlamydia, which is the most prominent sexually transmitted bacterial infectious disease in the United States and worldwide. Hefty said that while there are two effective antibiotics against Chlamydia, there are many more which are much less effective or are ineffective entirely which means there is a significant need for a vaccine.  

According to Hefty, there is an incredibly high asymptomatic rate among people who have contracted Chlamydia. He said that approximately 60-70% of those with Chlamydia have not visited a clinic yet for treatment due to being asymptomatic and not knowing that they have it, which allows the disease to spread.

The Dynamic Duo of Bioscience 

Both Petillo and Hefty attributed the success and progression of these vaccine projects to two things.  

The first was being given the support of the Higuchi Biosciences Center at the University which awarded Hefty with the 2023 J.R. and Inez Jay Fund research award.This award gave the funding for Hefty to do preliminary studies. The findings of these studies were later provided to the National Institute of Health (NIH) which led to them being awarded the NIH’s $3 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award. 

Petillo said that the problem of Lyme Disease is not isolated to the United States and that issues are occurring in Northern Europe and in Russia as well. 

Design-Zyme’s vaccine for Lyme Disease is fully functional toward combating the strain of bacteria that can be found here in the United States, but it still needs to be discovered if it can work as effectively on strains abroad. Petillo said this is part of why they received the SBIR award. 

Both Hefty and Petillo also said that this project could not be possible without each other and that each brings different strengths and skills that can complement each other. 

“We know how to make the vaccine. We know how to do a lot of the preliminary evaluations of the vaccine,” Petillo said when talking about the work of Design-Zyme. “But that intermediate space where you're actually evaluating how effective your vaccine is, not only against one form of the disease but several different, that's where Scott plays the pivotal role in this project.”