Does biotech finally have a good answer for Lyme disease?

After decades of stops and starts, medicine has no answer for Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness estimated to affect about 300,000 people per year. But that could change in the coming years, as two new approaches to Lyme gradually progress.

As STAT’s Brittany Flaherty reports, scientists are pursuing a pair of ideas to ward off infection: a vaccine against the bacteria that causes Lyme, and an injected antibody that could give people immunity to the disease. Each remains at least four years from the market.

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Meanwhile, there’s another idea for dealing with Lyme disease: get rid of it with genome editing. Scientists have a plot to breed Lyme-resistant mice that would halt the disease’s transmission to predatory ticks and thus to people. Here’s their rationale for carrying out the experiment, and here’s a note of caution about tinkering with nature.