Mission

Despite great progress in understanding the basic biology of Lyme disease (much of it from researchers linked to Tufts),
“there have been no major changes in how we diagnose or treat Lyme disease in the last 30 years.”
Why some patients continue to have symptoms after treatment of Lyme disease while others recover is still not understood.

To change the trajectory of Lyme disease research, the Tufts Lyme Initiative has recruited investigators from many different fields to work together to focus on studies that have the potential to improve patient lives.  While traditional research is performed within a “field” of work, we are bringing together scientists from different walks of research—microbiologists, immunologists, neuroscientists, ecologists, entomologists, biomedical engineers and drug developers—to work together to solve Lyme disease.  Together, we share almost $50 million dollars in funding for active research projects– almost all of which are collaborative projects between members of the Tufts Lyme Initiative. 

We are working both within the Lyme Initiative and with partners in academia and industry.Our goal is to help advance all research that can lead to improvements for patients by sharing our expertise widely. Our current projects include development of: new diagnostic tests including those that can identify post-treatment Lyme disease/chronic Lyme disease, anti-tick drugs, narrow spectrum antibiotics through metabolic modeling, new vaccines, development of microneedles for diagnosis and drug delivery,  artificial intelligence approaches to drug discovery and understanding drug resistance and strategies for understanding the underlying mechanism of persistent symptoms.  These projects are tied together by our latest study, PROSSECO, which is a NIH sponsored, longitudinal study of patients from the time they develop acute Lyme disease to the time they recover or develop post-treatment Lyme disease/chronic Lyme.

In short, our goal is to put ourselves out of business.