Topic: Birmingham's FoodSource Lure Corp. gets grant to create bait to medicate mice
Melanie Reber
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Birmingham's FoodSource Lure Corp. gets grant to create bait to deliver oral Lyme vaccine to field mice
Food would deliver vaccine to field mice
Friday, August 01, 2008 CHARLES R. McCAULEY News staff writer
Birmingham's FoodSource Lure Corp. has received a $600,000, two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop edible bait to deliver a Lyme disease vaccine to field mice.
The bait will be designed to attract the white-footed mouse, the primary carrier of the Lyme disease-causing bacterium. Deer ticks in their nymphal stage feed on infected field mice and carry the bacterium into adulthood when they feed on larger hosts - humans.
Under consideration is bait about the size of an ice cube that could be placed in a box small enough for the white-footed mouse, said Ed Rogers, FoodSource's co-founder and president. His company must determine the bait's color, flavor and exact composition.
Food Source is best known as a maker of edible fish lures that are sold by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other retailers, but the company also is working on wildlife vaccine delivery systems, gel hunting attractants and pet treats.
The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases grant "is highly significant, but only a small part of FoodSource's expanding work in the $16 billion animal pharmaceutical market," Rogers said.
The funding is a first-phase grant for a mechanism to vaccinate the mice so they could no longer pass along the disease, or to reduce the disease's effectiveness. Based on its success with the vaccine-delivery product, FoodSource could land a larger grant from the NIH agency and rights to sell the vaccine bait. Further work would involve seeing if the vaccine works on other carriers, Rogers said.
Lyme disease, the nation's most common tick-borne disease, is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi that's transmitted to humans who are bitten by infected blacklegged, or deer, ticks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fever, headache, fatigue and a skin rash are among typical symptoms. In later stages, the untreated infection can spread to the brain, nerves, eyes, joints and heart.
Rogers said a consortium of researchers from across the nation has developed a vaccine to immunize field mice. FoodSource will partner with researchers at Tufts University's schools of graduate biomedical sciences and veterinary medicine who are experts on oral Lyme disease vaccine and the white-footed mouse.
Concern about warmer weather patterns enabling the population of ticks to increase led to the grant, Rogers said. Though the disease occurs primarily in the Northeast, people in Alabama and other regions have been victims.
FoodSource, using technology developed at Auburn University, specializes in biodegradable edible, food-grade baits for a variety of animal species. Its investors include several Birmingham-area individuals, the S.C.O.U.T. Healthcare Fund and Bonaventure Capital.
Melanie Reber
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An ecological approach to preventing human infection: Vaccinating wild mouse reservoirs intervenes in the Lyme disease cycle
1. Jean I. Tsao*,�,�, 2. J. Timothy Wootton�, 3. Jonas Bunikis�, 4. Maria Gabriela Luna�,�, 5. Durland Fish*, and 6. Alan G. Barbour�,∥,**
+Author Affiliations
1. *Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520; �Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637; �Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824; and �Departments of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697
1.
Edited by Emil C. Gotschlich, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, and approved November 11, 2004 (received for review August 6, 2004)
Abstract
Many pathogens, such as the agents of West Nile encephalitis and plague, are maintained in nature by animal reservoirs and transmitted to humans by arthropod vectors. Efforts to reduce disease incidence usually rely on vector control or immunization of humans. Lyme disease, for which no human vaccine is currently available, is a commonly reported vector-borne disease in North America and Europe.
In a recently developed, ecological approach to disease prevention, we intervened in the natural cycle of the Lyme disease agent (Borrelia burgdorferi) by immunizing wild white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus), a reservoir host species, with either a recombinant antigen of the pathogen, outer surface protein A, or a negative control antigen in a repeated field experiment with paired experimental and control grids stratified by site.
Outer surface protein A vaccination significantly reduced the prevalence of B. burgdorferi in nymphal blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) collected at the sites the following year in both experiments. The magnitude of the vaccine's effect at a given site correlated with the tick infection prevalence found on the control grid, which in turn correlated with mouse density.
These data, as well as differences in the population structures of B. burgdorferi in sympatric ticks and mice, indicated that nonmouse hosts contributed more to infecting ticks than previously expected. Thus, where nonmouse hosts play a large role in infection dynamics, vaccination should be directed at additional species.
Melanie Reber
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Of Mice and Men -- A Novel Approach to Preventing Lyme Disease
Immunizing mice against Borrelia burgdorferi may disrupt the cycle of Lyme disease.
Although a human Lyme disease vaccine was protective, safety concerns and the need for yearly booster immunizations limited its use, and the vaccine was withdrawn from the market. (Recently, researchers (one of them involved in developing Lyme disease vaccines) studied the possibility of immunizing wildlife carriers against the Lyme disease agent, Borrelia burgdorferi, to decrease the pathogen's prevalence in ticks.
In 1998 and 2001, the investigators captured 928 white-footed mice at sites in southern Connecticut, where Lyme disease is common, and inoculated them subcutaneously with recombinant B. burgdorferi outer surface protein A (OspA) or a control vaccine.
In 1999 and 2002, the researchers collected ticks at the same locations and assayed them for Borrelia species. Both years, the odds of tick infection with B. burgdorferi were significantly reduced in the locations where mice had received OspA compared with sites where the control vaccine had been given. Greatest effectiveness was seen in areas with highest mouse densities, confirming the role of mice in the ecology of B. burgdorferi; lower effectiveness occurred in areas of lowest mouse densities, suggesting an unexpectedly large contribution from alternative hosts (e.g., shrews, chipmunks). The OspA vaccine had no apparent effect on the health of mice, or on the prevalence of tick infection with a second Borrelia species.
Comment: Although subcutaneous vaccine delivery is impractical, an oral OspA vaccine has been shown to protect laboratory mice against B. burgdorferi and would likely be effective for both mouse and nonmouse hosts. Oral rabies vaccines for wildlife are already in use in the U.S. and Europe.
-- Richard T. Ellison III, MD
Published in Journal Watch Infectious Diseases January 14, 2005 Citation(s):
Tsao JI et al. An ecological approach to preventing human infection: Vaccinating wild mouse reservoirs intervenes in the Lyme disease cycle. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2004 Dec 28; 101:18159-64.
* Original article (Subscription may be required) * Medline abstract (Free)
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