Lyme Disease Biobank

Check out @lymenews.bsky.social MyLymeData 2025 Research Chartbook! Great graphical representation of registry data and what we are learning from Lyme patients. What an important resource for the community. 10 years of data and counting.

I'm really curious is there are differences in strains more likely to cause neurologic symptoms. And if different cell types are involved as the Borrelia disseminate into different tissues.

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Opens Applications for 2026 Emerging Leader Awards and Research Grants - Bay Area Lyme Foundation FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Bay Area Lyme Foundation Opens Applications for 2026 Emerging Leader Awards and Research Grants Annual program to fund two $150,000 grants to revolutionize diagnosis and treatmen...

Funding opp!

2 X 150K awards: 1 on Lyme disease and a new award on tick-borne pathogens (bacterial or parasitic)

Academic or private-sector researchers at the post-doctoral through associate professor level (or equivalent)

Due: February 15, 2026, at 11:59pm PT

www.bayarealyme.org/blog/bay-are...

Really elegant work and beautiful images! Do you think all strains of Borrelia disseminate using the same mechanism? Did you expect pericytes to be involved? Congratulations!

That is so cool! I didn't know that. She gave a great talk at ILADS.

This is another single-tier test that I'm really excited about. We require sample users to provide results before we break the blind on the samples. This test from InBio and Kephera's Hybrid ELISA both look really good in early Lyme (~ 1 week) where current serology tests are insensitive.

The multiplexed single-tier InBios Lyme Detect Multiplex ELISA is more sensitive than standard two-tier tests in the early stages of Lyme disease | Journal of Clinical Microbiology During initial Lyme disease infection, existing diagnostic tests have poor sensitivity, resulting in a high number of false-negative tests. This is due to the lag between infection and a robust immune...

New study in @jclinmicroeic.bsky.social shows a new multiplex Lyme serology test is more sensitive than standard two-tier serology tests! Detected more cases w EM at 7 days. Great collaboration with Pete Gwynne @tuftslyme.bsky.social journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Frontiers | Lyme Disease Biobank: 10 years of 3 month follow-up visits from 2014 to 2023 IntroductionLyme Disease Biobank (LDB) enrolls participants with signs and symptoms of early Lyme disease (LD) from endemic areas and makes samples available...

Question for people who frequently publish - I just got a notification that our recent Lyme disease article published in July in Frontiers in Medicine had 500 downloads? Is that good? Thanks! www.frontiersin.org/journals/med...

Kephera has a poster at ICLB in September.

I'm really excited about the single-tier assays. There are several in development that have positive results in early Lyme samples with EM that STTT and MTTT miss. These single-tier tests are more sensitive without sacrificing specificity and take less time/resources to run.
#TickSky
#MicroSky

A novel single-tier serologic test to diagnose all stages of Lyme disease | Journal of Clinical Microbiology The diagnosis of Lyme disease, a tick-borne spirochetal infection caused by Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, is subject to two major limitations: the need for a two-tier serologic testing algorithm to provide adequate specificity, and the low sensitivity ...

Kephera's single-tier Lyme test published in @ASM JCM - Hybrid ELISA approach requires binding to VlsE AND C6. More sensitive in early disease while maintaining specificity. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

What a good girl! Give Jewel pets for me.

What's the cute pup's name?

There are several single-tier assays in development that I'm enthusiastic about - all posters at ICLB. I'm really looking forward to that meeting.

That is a good point - I don't know how the reporter missed that - it's on the Aces website.

Finally - an article acknowledging rashes aren't all bulls-eyes. All the Lyme and tick coverage is great - but so many articles focus on the bulls-eye and it's not what most Lyme rashes look like.

"While a bull-eye-shaped rash is telltale sign of Lyme disease, this type of EM is actually not a common presentation, said Liz Horn, PhD, MBI, principal investigator of the Lyme Disease Biobank, a biorepository of samples from people with Lyme disease."

New Lyme Blood Test Bests Standard Diagnostics The single-tier test uses artificial intelligence to accurately detect Lyme disease from the first few weeks of infection through 1 year post-diagnosis.

Article from @medscape.com about LymeSeek - a new Lyme diagnostic in development from Aces Diagnostics plus @bayarealyme.bsky.social biobank data showing how unreliable available tests are in early disease. (They miss 7 out of 10 early Lyme cases) www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...

Check out the decision tree in figure 4. Being able to identify the stage of Lyme disease would help patients and providers.

Class and isotype of VlsE-specific antibody differentiates Lyme disease stage | Journal of Clinical Microbiology The order of switching between the immunoglobulin heavy chain (Fc) is time dependent, progressing from IgM/D to IgG3/IgG1/IgA1/IgG2/IgG4 and later to IgE/IgA2. In this study, we show that B. burgdorfe...

New research from @gomes-solecki.bsky.social and team on using immunoglobulin class and IgG isotypes to distinguish different stages of Lyme disease. Could help identify early Lyme cases which are often missed by current serology tests. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Want to learn more about the biobank? Check out my talk about our sample collection, diagnostics in development using these samples, and finding Borrelia in tissue! Shout out to @livlyme.bsky.social for a great Summit and making these talks available!

Great interview with @tuftslyme.bsky.social Linden Hu! This really is the year for ticks and Lyme disease.....

Did you blow up the image to find them? Or can you see them in the pic as is?

sCD163, IFN-β, and IL-10 did not change during acute Lyme but were decreased during convalescence. These results using biobank samples provide information on the inflammatory processes involved in the progression and resolution of Lyme disease.

For cytokines elevated in early Lyme, IL-12, IFN-gamma, and soluble TNF receptors returned to normal levels at convalescence, while MMP-1 stayed elevated, and sIL6R, IL-26, IL-2, and IFN-alpha dropped.

EXPRESS: Key inflammatory mediators drive the resolution of acute Lyme disease - Jorge L. Cervantes, Shahrukh Chaudhry, Jose Barragan, Idris Akinlusi, Ted Zhao, Ryan Graff, Bo-young Hong, 2025 Lyme disease is an inflammatory disease in response to Borrelia burgdorferi infection. We analyzed cytokines in sera from acute and convalescent LD patients, an...

New paper from Jorge Cervantes and team in J Investig Med looking at cytokines in acute and convalescent samples from patients with early acute Lyme. At convalescence, some cytokines returned to normal levels, some were elevated, and others were reduced.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

sCD163, IFN-β, and IL-10 did not change during acute Lyme but were decreased during convalescence. These results using biobank samples provide information on the inflammatory processes involved in the progression and resolution of early acute Lyme disease.

Congratulations! @lymenews.bsky.social MyLymeData is an incredibly important resource in #LymeDisease.

Frontiers | Serologic biomarker discovery for differentiating Lyme disease from diseases with similar clinical symptoms using broad profiling of antibody binding IntroductionLyme disease (LD) is a tick-borne disease that is a substantial public health burden with estimated about 0.5 million new cases per year in the U...

New study from long time collaborator Neal Woodbury and team at #ASU identifies #biomarkers using #Biobank samples that distinguish #LymeDisease from other febrile illnesses. #diagnostics
www.frontiersin.org/journals/imm...

Is that in your backyard? Are they friendly?