The Lyme pre-exposure prophylaxis (Lyme PrEP) being developed by MassBiologics at UMass Medical School may be headed to a Phase I clinical trial as soon as next year and brought to market in 2022, according to an article in STAT. Lyme PrEP provides a monoclonal antibody that protects against the disease, said Mark Klempner, MD, executive vice chancellor for MassBiologics and professor of medicine.
“When you try and hit many birds with one stone, you run the risk of having a lot more off-target effects,” Klempner told STAT. “Our approach is to go for the most important one first, which is Lyme disease. I think everybody concurs that this is the biggest public health issue of the tick-transmitted diseases.”
Learn more about research at UMMS to prevent Lyme disease, and how it compares to potential vaccines: STAT: Can a new Lyme disease vaccine overcome a history of distrust and failure?
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