The Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative provides services to help advance research in Lyme disease. These services are offered to other academic institutions, companies, foundations and governmental researchers. All services are offered at cost. Services include but are not limited to:
Research Services
Clinical Lyme Research Network
Researchers at Tufts on both the Boston and Maine campuses are actively involved in clinical research and have developed a network of primary care practices where patients can be evaluated and enrolled in research protocols. Our study coordinators are able to go on site to enroll subjects, perf
orm tests and collect samples. Investigators interested in utilizing our network for clinical trials can contact us at Lymestudy@tufts.edu.
Patient Serum bank
The Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative has developed a bank of several thousand serum samples from well characterized patients with Lyme disease at various stages. Serum from patients with other tick-borne diseases may also be available in smaller numbers. Interested parties should send an inquiry to Lymestudy@tufts.edu.
Tick-Mouse Model for Lyme disease
The murine model for Lyme disease is a useful one for study of immune responses, vaccine protection, drug efficacy. The Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative offers this model to investigators interested in having mice challenged by feeding of Borrelia burgdorferi infected ticks. Interested parties should send an inquiry to Lymestudy@tufts.edu.
Tick Injections
Investigators at the Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative can administer agents directly into ticks through microinjection through the anal pore. This can include infectious agents, siRNA or other compounds of interest. Interested researchers can send an inquiry to Lymestudy@tufts.edu.
Borrelia burgdorferi detection by culture, real time PCR or digital droplet PCR
The Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative offers testing of ticks and animal tissues for the presence of B. burgdorferi by culture, real-time PCR or digital droplet PCR. Testing is offered for research purposes only. Interested parties should contact Lymestudy@tufts.edu.
Borrelia burgdorferi genome sequencing and analysis
The Tufts University Core facility (TUCF) offers B. burgdorferi genome sequencing using a hybrid of Nanopore and Illumina sequencing. Information about the TUCF can be found here (www.tucf.org). For a discussion of your sequencing needs, please send an inquiry to Lymestudy@tufts.edu.